She had died that morning, facing death with the fearless welcome that she had always given to any new experience. During her illness she had not been able to speak at all, but had written little sentences on scraps of paper; after the nature of it was declared she had been completely isolated, but her nurse disinfected these notes and sent them to the others. The first was a joyful little line to my mother, saying that as she had to be in bed, she was going to have a good spell of writing at a story she was engaged on. At the end, the last note but one had been for her nurse; in this she had thanked her and asked, “Is there anything I can do?” Her nurse answered her when she read it, “Let patience do her perfect work.”... So that was off Nellie’s mind. And then last of all she wrote to my mother who was by her bed and she traced out, “I wonder what it will be like. Give them all my love.” Then my mother began saying to her, “Jesu, Lover of my soul,” and while she was saying it, Nellie died.
That afternoon, we, the rest of us, went out on that still sunny October day and strolled through the woods together, splitting up into twos and threes and rejoining again. My mother seemed to have her hand in Nellie’s all the time, telling us, who had come too late, tranquilly and serenely, how the days had gone, and how patient she had been and how cheerful. We recalled all sorts of things about her, with smiles and with laughter, and there was no sense of loss, for my mother brought her amongst us, and never let go of her. Then, back in the house again, there were other arrangements to be made: it was settled that Arthur, Hugh and I should go back to Eton and Cambridge as soon as we could, but after the funeral we must spend a week of quarantine somewhere. How Nellie had got diphtheria was obscure, and it was better that we should not sleep in the house, or run a possible risk of infection. I wanted to see her, but my mother said that what I wanted to see was not Nellie at all, and that I must think of her as I had known her. And as I knew her, so she has always remained for me, collecting the cedar-sulphur, or laughing with open mouth, or grave and eager with sympathy. The glass-lidded pill-boxes were on a ledge of a bookcase, where we had left them a week or two before. My mother had seen them, and thought that there was probably some mystic significance about them, so I told her how Nellie and I had gathered them, and she said, “What treasures: bless her!” Golden October weather it was, with frosts at night and windless days, and the chestnut leaves came peeling off the trees and falling in a heap of tawny yellow below them, each leaf twirling in the air as it fell.