the
table left slovenly like it was. Then she fell kind of sick, and though
I felt sorry to see her doubled up and groaning, it had a good side to
it, for I got a Chinaman in to cook at forty dollars a month, and he
straightened things out fine and cleaned up the dirt of ages. I called
in Doctor Funk, the regular physician, and for a time Rosie improved,
getting well enough to nearly bite the cook's finger off when he tried
to stop her giving away a consignment of hams. But after a while she
took sick again, the cramps coming back worse than ever, and I let Doc
do what he could for her, which wasn't much, though better than Funk,
whose stuff didn't seem any more good and had lost its effect.

Finally, early one morning, she was taken most awful bad, vomiting
blood, and twisting and twitching in a way horrible to see, she being so
mountainous fat, and gibbering crazily in the Gilbert language--all
about me and little Benny, and devils snapping at her toes, and a giant
squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew
very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is
dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc
there, and saying something out loud about God damn quacks, and looking
and smelling savagely at the different bottles. Doc slunk out of sight,
and then Funk, he calmed down, and spoke to me very sympathetic and kind
as to what I was to do, and how, after all, it was a merciful release.

I buried her the same day, that being the rule in the tropics, and the
better part of the town followed her to the grave in the foreign
cemetery, that being a kind of rule or custom, too, in Apia, as well as
everybody getting tight afterwards at the Tivoli bar.

It was a strange feeling to come back to the house and to know that
Rosie was gone out of it forever, and that I had passed another big
landmark in my life. For all it was such a release, I was bluer than
blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way,
and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about
Benny and me before she died stuck in my throat, and seemed awful
pitiful; and I remembered how pretty she once had been, and always such
a good, true wife, and how me and the little store was all the world to
her before sorrow broke her heart.

I went upstairs, and sat looking out on the bay, thinking it all over,
and how in time death comes to every one of us,