simple an' natural, an' picked up the fruit piece an' one
o' the pillows, an' started up the hill.

"'Well, I nev-er,' says Mis' Merriman; 'the very bare brazenness. Ain't
you goin' to tell me _what_ you're doin' here with the flowers you say
is the dead's, an' I'm sure what was Sum's is mine an' the dead's the
same--'

"She begun to cry a little, an' with that Elspie looks up at her,
troubled.

"'I didn't mean to make you cry,' she says. 'I didn't mean you should
know anything about it. I come early to do it--I thought you wouldn't
know.'

"'Do _what_?' says Mis' Merriman, rill snappish.

"Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An'
when she sees Eb an' me standin' together, she give us a little
smile--an' she sort o' answered to us two.

"'Why,' she says, 'I ain't got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive,
that _belongs_. The dead is all other folks's dead, an' the livin' is
all other folks's folks. An' when I see all the graves down here that
they don't nobody know who's they are, I thought mebbe one of 'em
wouldn't care--if I kind of--adopted it.'

"At that she sort o' searched into Mis' Merriman's face, an' then
Elspie's head went down, like she hed to excuse herself.

"'I thought,' she said, 'they must be so dead--an' no names on 'em an'
all--an' their live folks all dead too by now--nobody'd care much. I
thought of it yesterday when we was walkin' down here,' she said, 'an' I
picked out the grave--it's the _littlest_ one here. An' then when we
come back past where the funeral was, an' I see them flowers--seemed
like I hed to see how 'twould be to put 'em on _my_ grave, that I'd took
over. So I come early an' done it. But I was goin' to lay 'em right back
where they belong--I truly was.'

"I guess none of us hed the least _i_-dea what to say. We just stood
there plain tuckered in the part of us that senses things. All, that is,
but one of us. An' that one was Eb Goodnight.

"I can see Eb now, how he just walked out o' the line of us standin'
there, starin', an' he goes right up to Elspie an' he looks her in the
face.

"'You're lonesome,' s'he, kind o' wonderin'. 'You're _lonesome_.
Like--other folks.'

"An' all to once Eb took a-hold o' her elbow--not loose an' temporary
like he shook hands, but firm an' four-cornered; an' when he spoke it
was like his voice hed been starched an' ironed.

"'Mis' Fire Chief,' s'he, lookin' round at her, 'I's to let you know
this week whet