hould push her from this farm or into final
decisions until a year had passed. She must have something to which she
could cling if it were nothing more than a familiar routine. Without
that to sustain and support her, she felt she could never meet the
responsibilities which had suddenly descended, with such a terrific
impact, upon her shoulders.

In an inexplicable way, these new burdens, her black dress--the first
silk one since the winter before Billy came--and the softening folds of
her veil, all invested her with a new and touching majesty that seemed
to set her a little apart from her neighbors.

Nellie had been frankly scandalized at the idea of mourning. "Nobody
does that out here--exceptin' during the services," she had said sharply
to her daughter-in-law when Rose had told her of the hasty trip she and
her aunt had made to the largest town in the county. "Folks'll think
it's funny and kind o' silly. You oughtn't to have encouraged it."

"Oh, Mother Mall, I didn't especially," the younger woman had protested.
"She just said in that quiet, settled way she has, that she was going
to--she thought it would be easier for her. And I believe it will, too,"
she added, feeling how pathetic it was that Aunt Rose had never looked
half so well during Uncle Martin's life as she had since his death.

"Oh, well," Mall commented, "Rose always was sort of sentimental, but
there's not many like her. She's right to take her time, too. It'll be
six or eight months, anyway, before she can get things lined up. She's
got a longer head than a body'd think for. Look at the way she run that
newspaper office when old Conroy died."

"That was nearly thirty years ago," commented his wife crisply, "and
Rose's got so used to being bossed around by Martin that she'll find it
ain't so easy to go ahead on her own."

With her usual shrewdness, Nellie had surmised the chief difficulty,
but it dwindled in real importance because of the fact that Rose so
frequently had the feeling that Martin merely had gone on a journey
and would come home some day, expecting an exact accounting of her
stewardship. His instructions were to her living instructions which must
be carried out to the letter.

She had attended with conscientious promptness to checking the trouble
that had brought about his death. "I promised Mr. Wade it should be the
first thing," she had explained to Dr. Hurton. "'You'll let it be the
first thing, won't you?' Those were his very