hen with a poignancy even those first days
had not carried that she would never see her mother again, knew as she
stepped into the house that her mother was gone. And yet it would keep
seeming her mother must be somewhere in that house, that in a little
while she would come in the room and tell something about where she had
been. And she would find herself listening for her grandfather's slow,
uncertain step; and for Terror's bark--one of his wild, glad rushes into
the room. Ted said that Terror had been run over by an automobile a
number of years before.

Nor was it only those whom death kept away who were not there. Her
sister Harriett had not been there to welcome her; now it was evening
and she had not yet seen her. Ted had merely said that he guessed
Harriett was tired out. He seemed embarrassed about it and had hastily
begun to talk of something else. And none of the old girls had come in
to see her. The fact that she had not expected them to come somehow did
not much relieve the hurt of their not coming. When a door opened she
would find herself listening for Edith's voice; there was no putting
down the feeling that surely Edith would be running in soon.

Most of the time she sat by her father's bed; though she was watching
him dying, to sit there by him was the closest to comfort she could
come. And as she watched the face which already had the look of death
there would come pictures of her father at various times through the
years. There was that day when she was a tiny girl and he came home
bringing her a puppy; she could see his laughing face as he held the
soft, wriggling, fuzzy little ball of life up to her, see him standing
there enjoying her delight. She saw him as he was one day when she said
she was not going to Sunday-school, that she was tired of Sunday-school
and was not going any more. She could hear him saying, "Ruth, go
upstairs and put on your clothes for Sunday-school!"--see him as plainly
as though it had just happened standing there pointing a stern finger
toward the stairs, not moving until she had started to obey him. And
once when she and Edith and some other girls were making a great noise
on the porch he had stepped out from the living-room, where he and some
men were sitting about the table, looking over something, and said,
mildly, affectionately, "My dears, what would you think of making a
little less noise?" Queer things to be remembering, but she saw just how
he looked, holding the