made herself tidy.

The next day but one she took Harold for a walk in the afternoon. When
they were quite alone and out of earshot she said:

'I have been thinking all night about poor mother. Of course I know she
cannot be moved from the crypt. She must remain there. But there
needn't be all that dust. I want you to come there with me some time
soon. I fear I am afraid to go alone. I want to bring some flowers and
to tidy up the place. Won't you come with me this time? I know now,
Harold, why you didn't let me go in before. But now it is different.
This is not curiosity. It is Duty and Love. Won't you come with me,
Harold?'

Harold leaped from the edge of the ha-ha where he had been sitting and
held up his hand. She took it and leaped down lightly beside him.

'Come,' he said, 'let us go there now!' She took his arm when they got
on the path again, and clinging to him in her pretty girlish way they
went together to the piece of garden which she called her own; there they
picked a great bunch of beautiful white flowers. Then they walked to the
old church. The door was open and they passed in. Harold took from his
pocket a tiny key. This surprised her, and heightened the agitation
which she naturally suffered from revisiting the place. She said nothing
whilst he opened the door to the crypt. Within, on a bracket, stood some
candles in glass shades and boxes of matches. Harold lit three candles,
and leaving one of them on the shelf, and placing his cap beside it, took
the other two in his hands. Stephen, holding her flowers tightly to her
breast with her right hand, took Harold's arm with the left, and with
beating heart entered the crypt.

For several minutes Harold kept her engaged, telling her about the crypt
in his father's church, and how he went down at his last visit to see the
coffin of his dear father, and how he knelt before it. Stephen was much
moved, and held tight to his arm, her heart beating. But in the time she
was getting accustomed to the place. Her eyes, useless at first on
coming out of the bright sunlight, and not able to distinguish anything,
began to take in the shape of the place and to see the rows of great
coffins that stood out along the far wall. She also saw with surprise
that the newest coffin, on which for several reasons her eyes rested, was
no longer dusty but was scrupulously clean. Following with her eyes as
well as she could see into the further corners