The first thing I was aware of was the sound of Forester blubbering, and then of the place being full of neighbours and my mother sitting by the fire in a chair out of the best room, crying heartily. We flung ourselves upon her, crying too, and were gathered up in a violence of grief and rocking, through which I could hear a great many voices in a kind of frightened and extenuating remonstrance, "Come now, Mrs. Lattimore. Now Sally--there, there----" at every word of which my mother's sobbing broke out afresh. I remember getting done with my crying first and being very hot and uncomfortable and thinking of nothing but how I should wriggle out of her embrace and get away, anywhere to escape from the burden of having to seem to care; and then, but whether it was immediately after I am not sure, going rather heavily upstairs and being overtaken in the middle of it by the dramatic suggestion of myself as an orphan child toiling through the world--I dare say I had read something like that recently--and carrying out the suggestion with an immense effect on Uncle Alva, who happened to be coming down at that moment. And then the insidious spread through all my soul of cold disaster, out of which I found myself unable to rise even to the appearance of how much I cared. Of all that time my father lay dead in the best room, for by the usual Taylorville procedure the funeral could not take place until the afternoon of the second day, I have only snatches of remembrance: of my being taken in to look at him as he lay in the coffin in a very nice coat which I had never seen him wear, and the sudden conviction I had of its somehow being connected with that mysterious summons which had taken Uncle Alva away from us that morning in the street; of the "sitting up," which was done both nights by groups of neighbours, mostly young; and the festive air it had with the table spread with the best cloth and notable delicacies; and mine and Forester's reprisals against one another as to the impropriety of squabbling over the remains of a layer cake. And particularly of Cousin Judd. He came about dusk from the farm--he had been sent for--looking shocked, and yet with a kind of enjoyable solemnity, I thought; and the first thing he wished to do was to pray with my poor mother. "We must submit ourselves to the will of God, Sally," he urged. "O God! _God!_" said my mother, walking up and down. "I'm not so sure God had anything to do with it." "It's a wrong spirit, Sally, a wrong spirit--a spirit of rebellion." My mother began to cry. "Why couldn't God have left him alone? What had he done that he should be taken away? What have _I_ done----" "You mustn't take it like this, Sally. Think of your duty to your children. 'The Lord giveth'----" "Go tell Him to give me back my husband, then----"