We had Louisa M. Alcott’s “Old-Fashioned Girl” to read, and proceeded to pass the night sitting up in the room next to the one where our dead schoolmate lay. The girl’s brother (the same who years before had bitten off the nose of my leatherhead doll), kept coming into the room and lamenting his sister’s death; then, going into the parlour, he would weep over the body, groaning and reproaching himself noisily for his past unkindness. The wildness of his grief, which came in paroxysms, was terrible. I pitied him, but it was a relief when he calmed down and went to bed. Late in the evening the undertaker came and was alone in the parlour a long time. On coming out he asked who was going to stay over night. Lizzie and I told him we were. “But what grown person, I mean.” On learning that there was no one else, he scrutinized us a moment, then said to me, “If you will step in here, I will show you what I wish you to do.” Wondering, I followed him and learned that at midnight I was to remove the cloth from the face, moisten it in a solution, replace it, “taking care to press it well down on the eyes and around the nose and lips.” I have forgotten what else we had to do, but remember that I had to remove the folded hands from across the chest. (I did it by taking hold of the nightgown sleeves at the wrist. How startled I was at the spring the arms gave as I let go the sleeves!) He added that if I did it at midnight, and again at three or four o’clock in the morning, it would answer. I have done much harder things since, but never remember undertaking anything that seemed more of an ordeal than that was then--our dead schoolmate, my shrinking at the feel of a corpse, the mere staying up in this remote house that night, no neighbours within call, we two girls, with the sick parents and the remorse-stricken brother--no one to give us moral support--small wonder that I quailed! But it had to be done. My companion, less self-contained, and terrified on learning what was required, began to be hysterical. It was not easy to get her interested in the book, but we read on and on, taking turns through the long hours, our feverish excitement increasing as the dread hour approached. How loud the clock ticked! how every little sound about the house smote our ears! how furtively we kept glancing at the time, pretending not to be thinking of it! how our voices trembled! We both started in affright as the clock began to strike twelve! Lizzie held the lamp while I did as I had been instructed. Poor girls! They seem like someone else, not I and another. She trembled and nearly dropped the lamp; and when it was done, we almost ran from the room. It was no vulgar fear of the corpse; it was the general gruesomeness, our loneliness, and all that--the uncanny, tiny little mother, a mere skeleton; the Quilp-like father--everything added to our shuddering dread.