The time had come when she might be pardoned, had she been "troubled," not indeed by "little things," but by some of serious import. A hidden, insidious disease, which seldom leaves its nature long doubtful, had begun its work, and the quickened spirit caught the first whisper of monition. Even two years before, she had a sort of presentiment, if not a distinct warning, of her fate, and in a pleasant way signified it to her husband, who answered as pleasantly, and probably thought no more of it. How much she thought of it we cannot know. But as early as the summer of 1845 she prepared her mind for a painful operation; and, when relieved of the immediate necessity, wrote thus to a friend: "You may imagine the depth of my gratitude; for I could not doubt that an operation, even if successful, would disable me for a long time; and I could not look upon the fact of being taken off from my duties, without much anxiety as to how my place was to be supplied. Still I have a strong conviction that ultimately this is to end my days. But I am not troubled at the thought, otherwise than that it is a mode of decay distressing to others. But God's will be done!"
Mary Ware was not only to suffer, but to _do_ God's will, to the end. And for four years longer we may follow her, and see her so busy and so cheerful, that we might think her unaware of danger,--except that we cannot fail to perceive in her letters how clear was her consciousness of all that was impending. But very few knew it. The work of life went on as usual. Her small school in the house occupied much of her time, and interested rather than satisfied her. She does not appear to have ever felt that she accomplished much in the way of teaching. She entered upon the task distrustingly. "I begin my little school to-morrow, and I doubt if any girl of sixteen, making her first essay at school-keeping, ever felt more dread of the thing. I am ashamed and almost amused at my own cowardice. The difficulty is, I have a great idea about a small thing, and cannot feel fully that it is 'little by little the bird builds his nest.'" There may have been another difficulty,--that children so young exercised only her patience, and could not call into action the higher powers, nor make her forget herself as she always wished to do. But there was another and absorbing work of mental and moral training in which she was constantly engaged,--that of her older children, for whom, by communion or correspondence, she was striving to do all that was possible in the time that remained to her.