provide for her future.

I remember a warm summer day, and the mowers in their shirt-sleeves,
mowing with long scythes, out in the meadow: I was with my mother, as
she passed by them, knitting. Outside the fence lay a half-bare rocky
hill, behind which my mother had a bench. Above this on a stony heap
grew raspberry-bushes, and beside them stood a few small birch-trees.
While I was scrambling about among the stones, picking raspberries,
father called my mother.

When she had gone away, there came over to me from the other side of the
hill a tall, pale lady, who seemed older than mother, dressed in black,
with a stand-up, white, frilled collar; she looked at me very kindly,
and stretched out to me a wild rose spray she had in her hand.

I did not feel at all afraid, and it did not seem as if she were a
stranger. Then she nodded sadly to me in farewell, and went back the
same way she had come.

When mother returned I told her that such a kind, strange lady had been
there, but she must have been in great sorrow, and now she was gone.

My mother--I remember it, as if it were yesterday--stood still for a
minute, as white as a sheet, looking at me with anguish in her eyes, as
if we were both going to die, then she threw her arms above her head,
and fell fainting to the ground.

I was too frightened to cry, but I remember that, while she lay
stretched insensible on the grass by the bench, I threw myself upon her,
crying, "Mother! mother!"