are spent.

But the bell rings. Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the
piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone,
begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource
among the poor. If she had had any infirmity--a wooden leg or a glass
eye--she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had
been spared intact she chose second best.

"I've had lots of shocks," she said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky
rocking-chair. The light from over the way flickered and gleamed. Mrs.
Brown's broad, yellow face and gray hair were now brilliant, now somber,
as she rocked in and out of the silver rays. Her voice was a metallic
whine, and when she laughed against her regular, even, false teeth there
was a sound like the mechanical yelp of a toy cat. Married at sixteen,
her whole life had been Brown on earth below and God in His heaven
above. Childless, she and Brown had spent over fifty years together. It
was natural in the matter of shocks the first she should tell me about
was Brown's death. The story began with "a breakfast one Sunday morning
at nine o'clock.... Brown always made the fire, raked down the ashes,
set the coffee to boil, and when the toast and eggs were ready he called
me. And that wasn't one morning, mind you--it was every morning for
fifty years. But this particular morning I noticed him speaking strange;
his tongue was kind o' thick. He didn't hardly eat nothing, and as soon
as I'd done he got up and carried the ashes downstairs to dump 'em. When
he come up he seemed dizzy. I says to him, 'Don't you feel good?' but he
didn't seem able to answer. He made like he was going to undress. He put
his hand in his pocket for his watch, and he put it in again for his
pocketbook; but the second time it stayed in--he couldn't move it no
more; it was dead and cold when I touched it. He leaned up against the
wall, and I tried to get him over on to the sofa. When I looked into his
eyes I see that he was gone. He couldn't stand, but I held on to him
with all my force; I didn't let his head strike as he went down. _When
he fell we fell together_." Her voice was choked; even now after three
years as she told the story she could not believe it herself.

Presently when she is calm again she continues the recital of her
shocks--three times struck by lightning and once run over. Her simple
descriptions are straightforward and dramatic. As she talks the wind
b