Ann Smith 
It amused her to rub it in that I was getting on in 
years ; the fact was a joke between us that never 
failed. For her good-temper never failed—her 
affection. 
A member of my household, to tease her one 
day, sighed audibly for some retreat ‘‘ on a moun- 
tain, where there was no work todo.” This was 
said with a fairly obvious intention of provoking 
a reproof from Aunt Ann, and hearing what she 
would say. 
And the reproof came, very gentle. Quite 
sincerely Ann said, ‘No. I like work. I like 
to have something to do. And I like to feel that 
it’s wanted—not to be doing it for the pleasure 
of being doing something.” 
She was eighty-two then; and then, as always, she 
had no thought of reward for her doings. To be 
knitting a woollen hearth-rug ; to help at washing- 
up the plates and dishes; to be at needlework 
(rarely for herself), was her pastime up to the last 
week of her life. It kept her “in the swim” 
with all that she found best in human nature. 
She died the sth of August, 1913—just a year 
before the war began. And, as that calamity went 
on from horror to horror, her brother John, soon 
to die himself, expressed thankfulness (I have told 
it before) that “‘ poor old Auntie” (as he called 
her to us) had been spared those evil days; she 
would have been so distressed. 
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