Emma, in pity, took up the jug of sweet oil to bathe the burns. Her hand was light from shaving, and it had learned a wonderful caution from the teachings of pain. She could mitigate its brown strength with a suddenness like the swift softnesses of Jarlsen’s old-time singing, and he would smile at her as she used to smile at his own skilled tunefulness. She almost stroked the scorches with her wise, soothing hands. She had meant to spend the morning on the doorsill, in the hope that a passing woman might be kind and glance her way. She longed so for a woman’s friendship! She was sure that half the sting of her sorrow would vanish with recital. At the last accident, when they brought home Jerry Black’s half-sister’s husband from a squeeze between the ore cars; as soon as every one had made quite sure he was dead, Martha Long--herself a personage even in the presence of a newly made widow--caught Jerry’s sister in her arms and rocked to and fro with her standing, until both women fell on the plush sofa. Such scenes dignify sorrow in one type of the common mind. Emma knew that Quarry had lied about her, and through the day she wondered what the lie might have been. The absence of feminine condolers worried her, and added to her dread of the time when the hands of the clock should reach half past one. That was the hour of Jarlsen’s leave-taking on the day before that set for their wedding. As the time approached the ticking of the clock seemed louder, and she went into the lean-to to escape from it. She lay there, covered over and quiet as though night had come. The latch rattled, and Martha Long, with her thin face and burning eyes, stood in the lean-to doorway with her baby’s half-knit hood in her fingers. She cast a glance of piercing inquiry at Emma, and her emphasis was not conciliatory. “Well,” she said, “God has strange ways with the righteous. You’ve had your troubles, poor girl!” “I don’t see there’s need for that kind o’ talk,” said Emma vaguely; “them as gives it ain’t had overmuch, I guess!” “Well, no offence,” said Martha, overbearingly; “how is he?” “Making out--no more. He ain’t got a piece of skin on him that don’t appear to be fried, and he talks till your heart splits in your body.” “It’s a good sign if he’s rebellious. My brother was fearful meek. He could hear a little, and the whole town had hopes, when one morning he turned his head in to the wall, and he says to poor Jarlsen, who was tending him, ‘You give that oatmeal and water where it’s wanted,’ he says; ‘you can give me a pleasure drink for the last I get.’ He didn’t drink much ever, and Jarlsen give him a drop of something, and then he lay still and was dumb dead before your poor feller could rinch the glass. So it goes!” Martha ended dismally. Emma did not find this quite satisfactory, so she said nothing.