n Annabel wanted to help in packing away
grandma's things, aunt Lucy agreed, half-heartedly, and then deferred
the task from day to day. In reality, Lucy Ann never meant to pack them
away at all. She could not imagine her home without them; but that,
Annabel would not understand, and her aunt pushed aside the moment,
reasoning that something is pretty sure to happen if you put things off
long enough. And something did; Annabel went away. It was then that Lucy
Ann took a brief draught of the cup of peace.

Long before her mother's death, when they both knew how inevitably it
was coming, Lucy Ann had, one day, a little shock of surprise. She was
standing before the glass, coiling her crisp gray hair, and thinking
over and over the words the doctor had used, the night before, when he
told her how near the end might be. Her delicate face fell into deeper
lines. Her mouth dropped a little at the corners; her faded brown eyes
were hot with tears, and stopping to wipe them, she caught sight of
herself in the glass.

"Why," she said aloud, "I look jest like mother!"

And so she did, save that it was the mother of five years ago, before
disease had corroded the dear face, and patience wrought its tracery
there.

"Well," she continued, smiling a little at the poverty of her state, "I
shall be a real comfort to me when mother's gone!"

Now that her moment of solitude had struck, grief came also. It glided
in, and sat down by her, to go forth no more, save perhaps under its
other guise of a patient hope. She rocked back and forth in her chair,
and moaned a little to herself.

"Oh, I never can bear it!" she said pathetically, under her breath. "I
never can bear it in the world!"

The tokens of illness were all put away. Her mother's bedroom lay cold
in an unsmiling order. The ticking of the clock emphasized the
inexorable silence of the house. Once Lucy Ann thought she heard a
little rustle and stir. It seemed the most natural thing in the world,
coming from the bedroom, where one movement of the clothes had always
been enough to summon her with flying feet. She caught her breath, and
held it, to listen. She was ready, undisturbed, for any sign. But a
great fly buzzed drowsily on the pane, and the fire crackled with
accentuated life. She was quite alone. She put her hand to her heart, in
that gesture of grief which is so entirely natural when we feel the stab
of destiny; and then she went wanly into the sitting-room, looking