Lizzie’s grief was different. Her heart didn’t ache because he was dying. Life having become what it was, he was better dead. If she could have died herself, she would have gone to her rest gladly, had it not been for the children. For their sake, she remained sweet, calm, active, brewing and baking, sweeping and cleaning, sitting up at night with Josiah while they were asleep, and hiding the fact that instead of a heart she felt nothing within her but a stone. Her grief was not for Josiah; it was for the futility of the best things human beings could bring to life. Honesty, industry, thrift, devotion, ambition, and romance had been the qualifications with which Josiah Follett and Lizzie Scarborough had faced the world; and this was the best the world could do with them. "It isn’t as if we ever faltered or refused or turned aside," she mused to herself, as she hurried from one task to another. "We’ve been absolutely faithful. We’ve had pluck in the face of every discouragement and eaten ashes as if it were bread, and, in the end, we come to this. It makes no difference that we didn’t deserve it; we get it just the same." Josiah’s wanderings as his mind grew feebler turned forever round one central theme: A job! a job! To be allowed to work! To have a chance to earn a living! It was his kingdom of heaven, his forgiveness of sins, his paradise of God. In the middle of night he would open his eyes and say: "I’ve got a job, Lizzie. Fifty a week!" "Yes, yes," Lizzie would say, drawing the sheet about his shoulders. "Yes, yes; you’ll go to town in the morning. Now turn over, dear, and go to sleep again." These excitements were generally in the small hours of the morning. By day, he was less cheerful. "I’m all in, Jennie darling," he would say then. "I don’t suppose I’ll ever get a chance to do a day’s work again." But one hot afternoon in the middle of July he woke from a long sleep with a look that startled her. Jennie had never seen the approach of death, but, now that she did, she knew it could be nothing else. He had simply rolled over on his back, staring upward with eyes that had become curiously glassy and sightless. Jennie ran to the head of the stairs. "Momma! Momma! Come quick!" He said nothing till Lizzie had reached the bedside. Though he didn’t move his head or look toward her, he seemed to know that she was there. "Here’s mother, Lizzie." He raised his hands, while a look of glad surprise stole over his face. "There’s a country," he stammered on, brokenly, "no, it isn’t a country—it’s like a town—they’re working—they’ve got work for me—and—and they’re never—they’re never—fired." The hands fell, but the look of glad surprise was only shut out of sight by the coffin lid. Teddy paid for the lot in the cemetery, as well as the other expenses of the funeral, within a week of his father’s death. "Now I’m through," he said to himself, with a long sigh of relief.