Ann Smith 
Her sister Susan had unexpectedly and without 
hope broken down, with cancer. For two years 
or so she had said nothing about it ; she had kept 
the trouble to herself for all that time, hoping, so 
it was hinted to me, to spare her mother’s old 
age that news. But eventually she could do no 
other than tell; and swiftly, after that, all her 
Strength gave out—except, indeed, her courage 
to suffer. 
_ So Ann came home, to be sick-nurse. I heard 
of dressings of the frightful wound. I only heard, 
but Ann actually went through it day after day 
for months—Ann, the sensitive, the tender- 
hearted—facing it as she had always faced trouble, 
without thought for herself. Inexperienced, she 
took on the sick-nursing ; she also tried to be to 
her mother the support her dying sister had been. 
Of course the most arduous of Susan’s duties had 
come to an end long ago. The pot-shop had 
been given up at William’s death; John, married 
now, was able to manage the farm; and now 
Susan’s own baking and her little grocery shop 
were perforce closed. In short, the old activities 
of Street Farm were dying out: a decrepit old age, 
as it were, was falling on the once busy household. 
Yet still there was much to do: the milk from the 
farm had to be got rid of daily: the house called 
for as much cleaning and scrubbing as ever, and 
the old mother—eager to be useful—needed care 
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