ing carted all the way
down there and then have to send the remains back. She had to promise
him she would send them back, though it did seem a pity with the
beautiful "semetary" they had there, and full of Northern folks as it
would hold and the undertaker a perfect gentleman, if she ever saw
one. But the widow hoped she knew her duty, and she would not wish to
be thought wanting in anything.

Now she supposed they would want to know how David passed away, though
she had no "strenth" to write, not having had her clothes off for days
or, you might say, weeks, nor slep' one consektive hour the last ten
nights. Well, he had seemed to gain a little when they first came, but
it wasn't no real gain, for he lost it all again and more too. The
pounds just fell off from that man, it seemed as if you could see them
go. The last month he fairly pined away, and she thought right to let
the folks at home know that he was called to depart, but he wouldn't
hear to it. "He said, Delia, he said, if you want me to die easy, he
said, don't let on to no one at home but what I'm doing all right." So
she set by and held her peace, though it went against her conscience.
Last Monday he couldn't leave his bed, and she said, "David, she said,
you never will leave it till you're carried," and he said, p'raps
'twas so, but yet he wouldn't allow it, for fear of scaring the
children. So that night he sat up in bed and his arms went out and he
said "Home!" just that word, two or three times over, and dropped
back and was gone. There she was, a widow with four small children,
and what she should do she didn't know.

Away there in a strange land as you might say, if it _was_ all one
country, it did seem as if them as sent them might have thought of
that and let them stay at home among their own folks. Not but what
there was elegant folks there. Everybody hed been as kind as could be;
one lady who was in "morning" herself had lent her a bonnet to wear to
the funeral (for she wasn't one to send the remains off without
anything being said over them); it was a real handsome bonnet, and she
had taken a pattern of it, to have one made for herself. The lady was
from New York way, and real stylish.

Mrs. Means intended to stay on a spell, as the money was not all gone,
and her strength needed setting up, after all she had been through.
Mr. Tombs, the undertaker, said he never saw any one bear afflicktion
so; she told him she was used to it. He was a perfec