"There ain't enough cows and grass and wood-boxes in the village to make it go, seems though," he ends up. Then he rushed into the house with my stuff, and headed for the Sykes's cow that we could hear lowing. We talked about George Fred while we looked at the flowers, Letty all interested in both of them, and then we came back and sat on the front porch. "Dear child," says Mis' Sykes, "wouldn't it be a comfort to you, now that you're among friends, to talk about your folks? What was it they died of? Was they sick long?" Letty looked over to her, sweet and serene. "Beautiful things happened while they were sick," she said. "A little child across the street used to come every morning with a flower or a fresh egg. Then there was an old man who picked every rose in his garden and sent them in. And a club there hired a singer who was at the theater to come and serenade them, just a few days before. Oh, so many beautiful things happened!" Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman sat still. This isn't the way we talk about sickness in the village. We always tell symptoms and treatments and pain and last words and funeral preparations, right up to the time the hearse backs up to the door. "She acts the queerest, to me, for a mourner," says Mis' Sykes, when she went for her shawl. Next morning we went down, Letty and me, to pick out the monument. Letty, she priced them, and then she figured some on a card. Then she walked over and priced some more things, and then she came out. I s'posed she was going to think about it. "Didn't she cry when she picked out the monument?" says Mis' Sykes to me over the telephone that noon. "I didn't see her," says I, truthful. That night, after he got the last cow milked, I see George Fred, in his best clothes, coming in our front gate. He was coming, I see, to do what I said--help be good to Letty and cheer her up. "Miss Letty," says he, "I know just how you feel. My cousin Jed, he lost his folks a year ago. They took down with the typhoid, and they suffered frightful--" "I'm so sorry, Mr. Fred," says Letty. I explained. "Fred," says I, "is his other front name. His final name is Backus." She colored up pretty, and went right on--it was curious: she hadn't been with me twenty-four hours hardly, and yet she didn't look a bit plain to me now. "Mr. Backus," Letty says, "I've been thinking. Miss Marsh and I have got a little money we're not using. Don't you want to borrow it, and keep on at business college, and pay us back when you can?" "Gosh!" says George Fred. If I hadn't been aiming to be a lady, I dunno what I might have said similar. They talked about it, and then George Fred went off, walking some on the ground and some in the air. "Letty!" says I, then, "where in this world--"