he invited her mother down to tend to her , her mother being old but rough and ready in this world as in the other , but nothing but more fever set in , and though her mother was there it was the husband whom she asked to read the bible to her , and he would bend by lamp light near her bed and thumb through the book , worn and splayed from many readings , and he would read this passage or that at her request , and in the sort of odd way that death lets things in , the two became closer than at any time since they were courting , and the man shook with tears after leaving her each evening , and he recalled in his hidden heart the love his memory had all but forgotten in the workaday of things .