, Mary stole out of her room
to look at the clock. It seemed as if the night would never end. A dim
light burning in the living-room showed that everything there was
unchanged, while the old clock ticked along with its accustomed clatter
of "All _right_! All _right_!" Surely, with the daylight everything
would be all right, and would awaken to the usual round of life.
Anything else was unbelievable, unthinkable!

On the way back to her room Mary's glance fell on her mother's sewing
basket in its accustomed corner. A long strip of exquisitely wrought
embroidery lay folded on top. It was the piece which she had finished
for Betty on the day that Mrs. Downs was taken ill, that afternoon when
they sat and watched the little procession file over the hill to the
grove of cedars. How plainly Mary could recall the scene. How clearly
she could hear her mother saying, "It is a happy way for the one who
goes, dear, to go suddenly. It is the way of all others I would choose
for myself."

And then with a force that made her heart give a great jump and go on
throbbing wildly, Mary realized that she was not dreaming, that her
mother was really gone; that this bit of embroidery with the needle
sticking just where she had left it after the final stitch, was the last
that the patient fingers would ever do. Dear tired fingers, that through
so many years had wrought unselfishly for her children; so unfailing in
their gentleness, in their power to comfort!

With a rush of tears that blinded her so that she could no longer see
the beautiful handiwork which seemed such a symbol of her mother's
finished life, Mary rushed back to her room to throw herself across the
bed again, and sob herself into a state of exhaustion. Then after a long
time, sleep came mercifully to her relief.

When she awakened, the early light of a June dawn was stealing into the
room, and the birds were singing jubilantly. She lay there a moment,
wondering why she was so stiff and uncomfortable. Then she was aware
that she was still dressed, and memory came back in a rush, with a pain
so overwhelming that she felt utterly powerless to get up and face the
day which lay ahead of her, and all the stretch of dreary existence
beyond it.

An irresistible impulse seemed drawing her towards her mother's room.
Presently she opened the door a little way and stood looking in. Then
step by step she advanced into the room. It looked just as it had the
day before in its spotless