but she shook her head. "I want to just sit here and keep
still till they're gone," said she.

She sat there. Some of the others came and added their persuasions to
Paulina Maria's, but she was firm. Jerome remained beside his mother;
Elmira had been bidden to go into the other room and help wait upon
the company.

"There's room for Jerome at the table, if you ain't coming," said
Paulina Maria to Ann; but Jerome answered for himself.

"I'll wait till that crowd are gone," said he, with a fierce gesture.

"You wouldn't speak that way if you were my boy," said Paulina Maria.

Jerome muttered under his breath that he wasn't her boy. Paulina
Maria cast a stern glance at him as she went out.

"Don't you be saucy, Jerome Edwards," Ann said, in a sharp whisper
through her black veil. "She's done a good deal for us."

"I'd like to kill the whole lot!" said the boy, clinching his little
fist.

"Hold your tongue! You're a wicked, ungrateful boy!" said his mother;
but all the time she had a curious sympathy with him. Poor Ann was
seized with a strange unreasoning rancor against all that decorously
feeding company in the other room. There are despairing moments, when
the happy seem natural enemies of the miserable, and Ann was passing
through them. As she sat there in her gloomy isolation of widowhood,
her black veil and her dark thoughts coloring her whole outlook on
life, she felt a sudden fury of blindness against all who could see.
Had she been younger, she would have given vent to her emotion like
Jerome. Her son seemed the very expression of her own soul, although
she rebuked him.

The people were a long time at supper. The funeral cake was sweet to
their tongues, and the tea mildly exhilarating. When they came at
last to bid farewell to Ann there was in their faces a pleasant
unctuousness which they could not wholly veil with sympathetic
sorrow. The childish old lady was openly hilarious. "That was the
best cup o' tea I ever drinked," she whispered loud in Ann's ear.
Jerome gave a scowl of utter contempt at her. When they were all
gone, and the last covered wagon had rolled out of the yard, Ann
allowed Paulina Maria to divest her of her bonnet and gloves and
bring her a cup of tea. Jerome and Elmira ate their supper at one end
of the disordered table; then they both worked hard, under the orders
of Paulina Maria, to set the house in order. It was quite late that
night before Jerome was at liberty to creep off to h