It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing machine. “We're _watching!_” whispered Emma Jane. “They watched with Gran'pa Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like money.” “They watched with my little sister Mira, too,” said Rebecca. “You remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and there was singing.” “There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there? Isn't that awful?” “I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those for her if there's nobody else to do it.” “Would you dare put them on to her?” asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice. “I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we _could_ do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you afraid?” “N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the same as ever.” At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all hazards and at any cost. Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement: “Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't gone in!” Emma Jane blenched for an instant. “Mrs. Dennett never said _there was two dead ones! Isn't that dreadful?_ But,” she continued, her practical common sense coming to the rescue, “you've been in once and it's all over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the schoolroom?” “Yes,” said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. “Yes, that's the prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper, because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.”