Esther nodded and cried a little; then she wiped her eyes, and said, hesitating: “You’re going to get a crêpe veil, aren’t you, mother, and a black dress? And I think I ought to have a black dress.” “We haven’t any money for new clothes, Essie,” Mrs. Eaton answered tremulously. “But I think we ought to wear black,” Esther protested. “It isn’t proper not to.” The other sighed with anxiety. “I don’t see how we can. He would not wish us to waste the money.” They were very intimate, these two; for each had found the other a shelter from the fierce integrity which had ruled the family life. And now instinctively they nestled together, panting and chirping like two frightened birds, and saying to each other, “_He_ would wish this, or that.” But he was dead, and the face of life was suddenly changed to them both. The withdrawal of the dominant righteous will of husband and father made an abrupt silence in their lives--a silence which was as overwhelming in its way as grief. To the mother it was as though having been borne helplessly along on some powerful arm, she had been suddenly set down on her own feet, and bidden to lead and carry others. Esther’s frightened question, “What is going to become of us?” echoed in her ears like a crash of bewildering sound. She had no answer; all she knew was that she must take care of the children; work for them; fight for them--poor little weak creature!--if necessary. She was thirty-five, this mother, but she looked much older. Once she must have been pretty; one knew that by the startled softness of her hazel eyes and the delicately cut pale lips; but her forehead, rounded like a child’s, was worn and full of lines, and her whole expression so timid and anxious and deprecating that one only thought of what her life must have been to cut so deep a stamp on such gentle and vague material. It had been, since her marriage, a very uneventful life, its keenest excitement the making both ends meet on her husband’s salary. Before that there had, indeed, been the keen and exciting experience of marrying in opposition to her father’s command, and being practically disowned by her people. She was Lydia Blair, a girl of good family, gentle and dutiful, as girls were expected to be thirty years ago--one of those pleasant girls who let their elders and betters think for them, and are loved as one loves comfortable and inanimate things. And then, suddenly, had appeared this harsh, fiery, narrow New England minister, of another denomination, of another temperament--for that matter, of another class; and she had developed a will of her own and married him. Why? Everybody who knew her asked, “Why?” Perhaps afterwards she herself asked why--afterwards, when he became so intent upon saving his own soul that he had no time to win his children’s love or to make love to his wife. By the time he came to die, very likely he had forgotten he ever had made love to her. He called her “Mrs.