After the funeral train had borne away from the old brown farm-house the silent form of her who was its peace, its light, its comfort, Zeph Higgins wandered like an unquiet spirit from room to room, feeling every silent memorial of her who was no longer there as a stab in the yet throbbing wound. Unlovely people are often cursed with an intense desire to be loved, and the more unlovely they grow the more intense becomes this desire. His love for his wife had been unusually strong in the sense of what is often called loving--that is, he needed her, depended on her, and could not do without her. He was always sure that she loved him; he was always sure of her patient ear to whatever he wished to say, of her wish to do to her utmost whatever he wanted her to do. Then he was not without a certain sense of the beauty and purity of her character, and had a sort of almost superstitious confidence in her prayers and goodness, like what the Italian peasant has in his patron saint. He felt a sort of helplessness and terror at the idea of facing life without her. Besides this, he was tormented by a secret unacknowledged sense of his own unloveliness: he was angry with himself--cursed himself, called himself hard names; and he who quarrels with himself has this disadvantage, that his adversary is inseparably his companion--lies down and rises, eats, drinks and sleeps with him. What intensified this conflict was the remembrance of his wife's dying words, enjoining on him the relinquishment of the bitter quarrel which had alienated him from his church and his neighbors, and placed her in so false a position. He knew that he was in the wrong; he knew that she was in the right, and that those words spoken on her death-bed were God's voice to him. But every nerve and fiber in him seemed to rebel and resist; he would not humble himself; he would not confess; he would not take a step toward reconciliation. The storm that was raging within expressed itself outwardly in an impatience and irritability which tried his children to the utmost. Poor Nabby did her best to assume in the family all her mother's cares, but was met at every turn by vexatious fault-finding. "There now!" he said, coming out one morning, "where's my stockings? Everything's being neglected--not a pair to put on!" "Oh yes, Father, I sat up and mended your stockings last night before I went to bed. I didn't go into your room, because I was afraid of waking you; but here they are on my basket." "Give 'em here, then!" said Zeph harshly. "I want my things where I know where they are. Your mother always had everything ready so I didn't have to ask for it." "Well, I never shall be as good as Mother if I try till I'm gray," said Nabby, impatiently. "Don't you be snapping back at me," said Zeph. "But it's jest so everywhere. Nobody won't care for me now. I don't expect it." "Well, Father, I'm sure I try the best I can, and you keep scolding me all the time. It's discouraging."