d again.
"There isn't any reason, of course. Why should there be?"

"I wouldn't speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think it
was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you know."

"I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine."

"She did, but she has come down again."

"Well, she can't hear."

"I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I shouldn't
think he'd ever get over it, having words with poor Edward the very
night before he died. Edward was enough sight better disposition than
Henry, with all his faults. I always thought a great deal of poor
Edward, myself."

Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes;
Rebecca sobbed outright.

"Rebecca," said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and
swallowing determinately.

"I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry
that last night. I don't know, but he did from what Rebecca
overheard," said Emma.

"Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,"
sniffled Rebecca.

"He never raised his voice," said Caroline; "but he had his way."

"He had a right to in this case."

"Yes, he did."

"He had as much of a right here as Henry," sobbed Rebecca, "and now
he's gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left him
and the rest of us again."

"What do you really think ailed Edward?" asked Emma in hardly more than
a whisper. She did not look at her sister.

Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms
convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.

"I told you," said she.

Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them above
it with terrified, streaming eyes.

"I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had
spasms, but what do you think made him have them?"

"Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had
dyspepsia."

Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. "Was there any talk of
an--examination?" said she.

Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.

"No," said she in a terrible voice. "No."

The three sisters' souls seemed to meet on one common ground of
terrified understanding though their eyes. The old-fashioned latch of
the door was heard to rattle, and a push from without made the door
shake ineffectually. "It's Henry," Rebecca sighed rather than
whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself after a noiseless rush across
the floor into her rocking-c