illness died.

Old Mrs. Myrover was inconsolable. She ascribed her daughter's death to
her labors as teacher of negro children. Just how the color of the
pupils had produced the fatal effects she did not stop to explain. But
she was too old, and had suffered too deeply from the war, in body and
mind and estate, ever to reconcile herself to the changed order of
things following the return of peace; and, with an unsound yet perfectly
explainable logic, she visited some of her displeasure upon those who
had profited most, though passively, by her losses.

"I always feared something would happen to Mary," she said. "It seemed
unnatural for her to be wearing herself out teaching little negroes who
ought to have been working for her. But the world has hardly been a fit
place to live in since the war, and when I follow her, as I must before
long, I shall not be sorry to go."

She gave strict orders that no colored people should be admitted to the
house. Some of her friends heard of this, and remonstrated. They knew
the teacher was loved by the pupils, and felt that sincere respect from
the humble would be a worthy tribute to the proudest. But Mrs. Myrover
was obdurate.

"They had my daughter when she was alive," she said, "and they 've
killed her. But she 's mine now, and I won't have them come near her. I
don't want one of them at the funeral or anywhere around."

For a month before Miss Myrover's death Sophy had been watching her
rosebush--the one that bore the yellow roses--for the first buds of
spring, and, when these appeared, had awaited impatiently their gradual
unfolding. But not until her teacher's death had they become full-blown
roses. When Miss Myrover died, Sophy determined to pluck the roses and
lay them on her coffin. Perhaps, she thought, they might even put them
in her hand or on her breast. For Sophy remembered Miss Myrover's thanks
and praise when she had brought her the yellow roses the spring before.

On the morning of the day set for the funeral, Sophy washed her face
until it shone, combed and brushed her hair with painful
conscientiousness, put on her best frock, plucked her yellow roses, and,
tying them with the treasured ribbon her teacher had given her, set out
for Miss Myrover's home.

She went round to the side gate--the house stood on a corner--and stole
up the path to the kitchen. A colored woman, whom she did not know, came
to the door.

"Wat yer want, chile?" she inquired.

"Kin I se