No sooner had we closed the creaking folding-doors and were back in the sitting-room than my companion, heaving a sigh of relief, said, “Now let’s go and have something to eat.” I could have screamed outright--“Eat _now!_ after that experience!” My hands felt contaminated, even after repeated washings. I begged her to wait awhile. So Miss Alcott still diverted us till I felt I could go and eat. After that we grew cheerful, even hilarious, and then felt guilty for laughing in that house of mourning. Long hours passed in talking and reading till we had to go in that dread room again. Finally morning came, and with it a neighbour who relieved us. Going home in the early dawn, the queer look of the quiet streets, the physical weariness, combined with the night’s experiences, made me feel years older. Stealing up the steps at home and creeping into the hammock on the veranda, I slept until the opening of doors and windows in the house announced the family astir. Perhaps a year after the death of this girl, another schoolmate died of the same disease--a brilliant, beautiful girl with smouldering dark eyes, a girl of great promise, who had made a brave fight for life. Her mother, who was given to doing things in a theatrical way, asked four of us girls to be honorary pall-bearers--to dress in white and follow the casket in and out of the church. At the house the general gloom and our own grief had been a strain on us, but as we got into the carriage we calmed down from our weeping and were trying to get in condition to face the ordeal at the church when, just as we were driving through the main street, without any warning, one of us _broke into laughter_! Two others followed in sympathy, the fourth girl looking so disgusted that it made us laugh the more. Finally she gave way, too, and we were all in a state of uncontrolled, unreasoning mirth! Although the carriage was closed, we feared the driver would hear us, or people in the street catch a glimpse of us. Our efforts at self-control were painful in the extreme. What would Ruth think if she could know of our conduct? But everything we tried to say only made matters worse. When the carriage drove into the churchyard, we were still in a pitiable plight, and how we ever mastered ourselves enough to step out and walk past the by-standers and on into the church behind the casket is something I marvel at even yet. But we had had our escape-valve, and now everything was done “decently and in order.” Long after that, we thought with remorse of our conduct, not understanding how blameless we were--how wrong it was to subject a group of impressionable girls to such an emotional strain.