After I could sit in my chair, it was as good as hearing gentle music just to see her on the other side of the fire, her hands in her lap, with the placidity of eternity doing nothing at all. One day she spoke of Viny. “I reckon you was right about Viny. I didn’t know how scrouged we wuz till I got to stayin’ over here with you. Seems like they’s more’n as many agin of us now, an’ when we all try to git around the fire, some of us kain’t see the blaze, let alone feel it. When they’s company the childern have to set back so fur they’re too cold to git their lessons.” It was then that the vague trouble about those two unbuilt rooms crystallized in my mind with unbearable clearness. By some economical turn or twist, I would get them put up. “Serena,” I said, “I’m going to have enough lumber hauled up the mountain to make two more rooms at your house, and I’ll have Cleve Saunders build them if Len can’t get the time.” “Oh,” she cried joyously, “me an’ Len wuz sayin’ last night how fine that would be! I reckon he’d better not go after pore little Viny till you git ’em done.” VIII A PROPER FUNERAL I We were on our way to see Uncle Nathe Ponder buried. Serena was as happy as she could be with decency, considering our solemn destination. She had not been away from home for several months, and her joyous reaction could be suppressed only intermittently. But, at any time, her laughter was pleasantly low of key, as if she were softly trying it out before subjecting you to the full flow that never came. And Serena was infectious. I had set out with my mind meditatively intrenched on the going down of men into the grave; the passing of man himself, of earth, of suns, of systems, with no full-grown hope of any immortal salvage; but Serena, pulsingly aware in a significant world, soon restored me to stature as a member of a community bent on giving due honor to one whose days among them had been spent with the vividness that amounts to virtue among a people who look to life for their drama instead of the stage and the morning papers.