y. Then she set him down,
and he stood till the end, looking away from the grave with almost a smile
on his face. He told some one, the next day, that he kept saying over to
himself all that time: "Beautiful gates of precious stones and angels
with harps."--"That's the city, you know, where my papa has gone. It's not
half so far off as we think; and papa is so happy there, he don't even
miss us, though he can see us every minute. And mamma and I are going
there pretty soon; next summer perhaps."

Part II.

For the first few days after the funeral, Draxy seemed to sink; the void
was too terrible; only little Reuby's voice roused her from the apathetic
silence in which she would sit by the hour gazing out of the east
bay-window on the road down which she had last seen her husband walk. She
knew just the spot where he had paused and turned and thrown kisses back
to Reuby watching him from the window.

But her nature was too healthy, too full of energy, and her soul too full
of love to remain in this frame long. She reproached herself bitterly for
the sin of having indulged in it even for a short time.

"I don't believe my darling can be quite happy even in heaven, while he
sees me living this way," she said sternly to herself one morning. Then
she put on her bonnet, and went down into the village to carry out a
resolution she had been meditating for some days. Very great was the
astonishment of house after house that morning, as Draxy walked quietly
in, as had been her wont. She proposed to the mothers to send their
younger children to her, to be taught half of every day.

"I can teach Reuby better if I have other children too," she said. "I
think no child ought to be sent into the district school under ten. The
confinement is too much for them. Let me have all the boys and girls
between six and eight, and I'll carry them along with Reuby for the next
two or three years at any rate," she said.

The parents were delighted and grateful; but their wonder almost swallowed
up all other emotions.

"To think o' her!" they said. "The Elder not three weeks buried, an' she a
goin' round, jest as calm 'n' sweet's a baby, a gettin' up a school!"

"She's too good for this earth, that's what she is," said Angy Plummer. "I
should jest like to know if anybody'd know this village, since she came
into 't. Why we ain't one of us the same we used to be. I know I ain't. I
reckon myself's jest about eight years old, if I have got