Half Loaves by Margaret Culkin Banning

Mrs. Horton's death came just before the time when Matthew had planned to leave for Washington. A succession of complications had hastened it. Three days before it came, Fliss knew that it was imminent and she spent those days sitting beside her mother for long periods, her face white and drawn, but her courage sustained as it always was in a crisis.

Death seemed on no great errand here in this shabby little flat, breaking no heart, effecting no terrible cleavage. Yet the solemnity of the struggle was not altered by the fact that it was only a commonplace, middle-aged woman who was fighting for the chance to keep on going to the moving pictures, gossiping, living in trivialities. Death, disregarding human gradations of importance, was choosing this soul gravely, solemnly. And Fliss, shivering a little by her mother's bed, watched and learned, and perhaps in her quick, practical way got a firmer grip on life from this first intimacy with death.