"Such is life." "Such is life." They crept through the city streets, stopping to let cars rumble past them, pulling up sharply before reckless pedestrians; then a smooth bowling over a bridge as wide as a boulevard and out into the rain-sopped country, with leafless trees stretching their black arms against a rain-swollen sky, and the wheels cutting the mud road like a knife through cold grease. "Angie would have loved this ride! She was always hatin' the rich for ridin' when she couldn't." "There ain't a trust company in town can beat my carriages. I got a fifty-dollar, one-carriage funeral here that can't be beat." "Everything is surely fine, Mr. Lux." "Lemme cover your knees with this rug, missy. We have one in all the carriages. You look real worn out, poor little missy. It's a sad day for you. Here, sit over on this side--it's quit rainin' now, and I'll open the window." The miles lengthened between them and the city, the horses were mud-splashed to their flanks. They turned into a gravel way and up an incline of drive. At its summit the white monuments of the dead spread in an extensive city before them--a calm city, with an occasional cross standing boldly against the sky. "Lots of these were my funerals," explained Mr. Lux. "That granite block over there--this marble-base column. I buried old man Snift of the Bronx last July. They've been four Lux funerals in that family the past two years. His cross over there's the whitest Carrara in this yard." Tillie turned her little tear-ravaged face toward the window, but her eyes were heavy and without life. "I--I don't know what I'd do if you wasn't along, Mr. Lux. I--I'm scared." "I'm here--don't you worry. Don't you worry. I'm just afraid that little lightweight jacket ain't warm enough." "I got a heavier one; but this is mournin', and it's all I got in black." "It's not the outside mournin' that counts for anything, missy; it's the crape you wear on your heart." They buried Angie on a modest hillside, where the early sun could warm her and where the first spring anemones might find timid place. The soggy, new-turned earth filled up her grave with muffled thumps that fell dully on Tillie's heart and tortured her nerve-ends. "Oh! oh! oh!" Her near-the-surface tears fell afresh; and when the little bed was completed, and the pillow of peace placed at its head, she was weak and tremble-lipped, like a child who has cried itself into exhaustion. "Ah, little missy!" said Mr. Lux, breathing outward and passing his hand over his side-swept hair. "Life is lonely, ain't it? Lonely--lonely!" "Y-yes," she said. The rain had ceased, but a cold wind flapped Tillie's skirts and wrapped them about her limbs. They were silhouetted on their little hilltop against the slate-colored sky, and all about them were the marble monoliths and the Rocks of Ages of the dead.