nce in
them than a child's, although they were reddened now with gentle
tears. She had the look of a young girl who had been out like a
flower in too strong a light, and faded out her pretty tints, but was
a young girl still. Belinda always smiled an innocent girlish simper,
which sometimes so irritated the austere New England village women
that they scowled involuntarily back at her. Paulina Maria Judd and
Ann Edwards both scowled without knowing it now as she spoke, her
words never seeming to disturb that mildly ingratiating upward curve
of her lips.

"I've come right over," said she, in a soft voice; "but it ain't true
what Henry said, is it?"

"What ain't true?" asked Ann, grimly.

"It ain't true you're goin' to have a funeral?" Tears welled up
afresh in Belinda's blue eyes, and flowed slowly down her delicate
cheeks, but not a muscle of her face changed, and she smiled still.

"Why can't I have a funeral?"

"Why, Ann, how can you have a funeral, when there ain't--when they
'ain't found him?"

"I'd like to know why I can't!"

Belinda's blue, weeping eyes surveyed her with the helpless
bewilderment of a baby. "Why, Ann," she gasped, "there won't be
any--remains!"

"What of that? I guess I know it."

"There won't be nothin' for anybody to go round an' look at; there
won't be any coffin--Ann, you ain't goin' to have any coffin when he
ain't found, be you?"

"Be you a fool, Belindy Lamb?" said Ann. A hard sniff came from
Paulina Maria.

"Well, I didn't s'pose you was," said Belinda, with meek abashedness.
"Of course I knew you wasn't--I only asked; but I don't see how you
can have a funeral no way, Ann. There won't be any coffin, nor any
hearse, nor any procession, nor--"

"There'll be mourners," broke in Ann.

"They're what makes a funeral," said Paulina Maria, putting on an
apron she had brought. "Folks that's had funerals knows."

She cast an austere glance at Belinda Lamb, who colored to the roots
of her fair curls, and was conscious of a guilty lack of funeral
experience, while Paulina Maria had lost seven children, who all died
in infancy. Poor Belinda seemed to see the other woman's sternly
melancholy face in a halo of little coffins and funeral wreaths.

"I know you've had a good deal more to contend with than I have," she
faltered. "I 'ain't never lost anybody till poor--Abel." She broke
into gentle weeping, but Paulina Maria thrust a broom relentlessly
into her hand.

"Here," said she