Henriette slept, and after a time a bell tolled in her dreaming. It awakened her. A gray light had come into the room, and the rain was gone. Well, and who could be dead? Somebody old and rich was dead, the bell had been tolling so long. The light about her bed grew brighter, and the ceiling shone with rose. She dozed again; but when she again awakened the bell was still tolling.... It must be an old person dead. Suddenly Henriette became aware of a flow, a movement in the house. The windows rattled; a door was opened somewhere and shut. And then there was a swishing of skirts, a running of feet. Her grandchildren! They crowded about her bed, three-deep, tense and excited. The cheeks of the littlest ones glowed, the way they did when there was bad news to be broken; when the sugar was out, or the cat had fallen down in the cistern. “Granny, what you think is happen? Old lady Josephine’s gone!” ... They crowded closer, to see how Henriette “took it.” “Poor Josephine, she got sick in the night and she passed away early this morning.” Henriette sat up against her pillow, blinking. She looked like the kind of old woman children make out of their knuckles, with black-headed pins for eyes. And now the older ones, her daughters, stole into the room on their tiptoes. They took her hands. “How you feel, Gran’mammy? Is your throat all right? Well, they’ve done sent for you, honey. They said Josephine asked for you in the night, to come and sing for her funeral.... Well, _le bon Dieu_ is love you, sho’, Mammy.” All day her children were busy, getting Henriette ready: her best alpaca cleaned and pressed; her mourning veil laid out, her gloves and her shoes. Shiny and speckless they must be, to follow the honoured dead. “Mammy,” her daughters said, “you stay in bed and rest, so your voice will be good to-morrow.” They were nice daughters; they were trying to make her feel prideful again.... All day long Henriette lay and gazed out at the white gravelled road, stretching away, on past Josephine’s house. Looked like she could see Josephine, sitting there on her gallery, the fat running over! Well, she would miss Josephine, her old crony. Toni and Josie both gone. It would be queer, a sort of joke, wailing for Josephine’s funeral. It would be like singing beside her own grave. * * * * * The next morning, at the first peep of day, her children came in to help her. “How you feel, Gran’mammy?” They looked at her and shook their heads. She was so thin and so old. With her friends all gone she seemed like something from some other life.... “Well, we won’t have Mammy much longer,” they said. They crowded about her, solicitous. Old Henriette sat up in bed. “Fetch me my specs,” she grumbled.