Charles Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop

CHAPTER 25 (continued)

She stepped forward, and pressed the passive hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old friends and companions--for such they were, though they were man and child--held each other in a long embrace, and then the little scholar turned his face towards the wall, and fell asleep.

The poor schoolmaster sat in the same place, holding the small cold hand in his, and chafing it. It was but the hand of a dead child. He felt that; and yet he chafed it still, and could not lay it down.