ome. However, the child was attacked by that horrible dread of
mothers, the croup. She was just the one to succumb, being a little
round ball of soft flesh. She only fought it a day and night, lifting
up her poor little hands to her straining throat incessantly. In less
than thirty-six hours Katie was dead.

Her mother took it in a blank stupor. She scarcely seemed to heed the
friends who came and went, the Sisters of Mercy, in their black
bonnets and cloaks, the priest with his attempts at comfort. Her
husband sat by her those days, his eyes turning from the
heart-breaking face of his wife to the brown baby on the bed, as
piteous as a frozen robin. After the funeral the mother went about her
usual occupations. She milked the cow, fed the hens, churned, swept,
and baked as of old. Yet she did all those things as with a broken
heart, and it would have been less dreadful in a way to see her
sitting with folded hands. She was incessantly weeping in those months
that followed Katie's death. One would have thought that her eyes
would be drained dry, but still the tears followed each other all day
long, and no one seemed able to comfort her. It was wretched enough
for her husband, poor fellow, coming home of an evening from his work,
but he did all unwearying patience could do to comfort her.

The only desire she seemed to have in those days was that she might
keep Katie's pussy with her, but that was not gratified. The cat had
moped and fretted greatly during the child's short illness, and had
cried distressingly about the house when Katie lay dead. Then after
the funeral had gone she had turned her back on the desolate house,
and had walked across the couple of fields that separated it from the
farmhouse. She came into the big airy kitchen that July day with so
evident an intention of remaining that no one disputed her right. Once
she had a sudden impulse to go and seek her little mistress, and went
running and leaping over the long pastures to the low white house.
They said it was the thing that wakened Katie's mother from the first
merciful stupor of her bereavement, the cat running in and moaning
piteously about the empty rooms, and the places where they had played
their jolly games. They said she inspected every possible place where
the child might be hiding, turning again and again, after moments of
disappointed bewilderment, to a new search. At last she gave it up,
and seemed to realise that Katie was gone. She turne