ure, a mind above his
business. Aggie had married her Outfitter, and J. Wilkinson Cohn, who
had become a full partner in his brother's cigar stand, had moved out to
Fifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could have
contradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out life
for his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursor
of what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it is
good for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond the
heart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away to
it in his waking hours, but he knew it was there for him, and visiting
it in dreams he kept in spite of the anxiety and Mr. Croker, his young
resiliency. Along in December, about two weeks before his midwinter
holiday, Ellen sent for him.

"It's not as if there hadn't been time for everything. You must think of
that, Peter. And your being able to come down every Saturday since the
first stroke. There's plenty that are hurried away without a good-bye or
anything."

"I know, Ellen."

"And it isn't as if there hadn't been plenty to say, either. Six weeks
would have been too long for anybody less loving than mother. They
wouldn't have known how to go through your life and say just the things
you'll be glad to remember when the time comes for them. You've got to
keep your mind on those things, Peter."

"Yes, Ellen."

The front room had been well rid up after the funeral and everybody at
Ellen's earnest entreaty had left them quite alone. Although there was
fire in the base burner, they were sitting together by the kitchen
stove, the front of which was thrown open for the sake of the warm glow
of the coals. By and by the kettle began to sing and the bare tips of
the lilac scratched on the pane like a live thing waiting to be let in.
The little familiar sounds refilled for them the empty room.

Outside it was every way such a day as a well-spent life might slip
away in; the tracks in the deep-rutted February snow might have been
worn there by the habit of sixty years. There was no hint of the spring
yet, but here and there in the bare patches on the hills and the frayed
icy edges of the drifts, the sign that the weight of the winter was
behind them. There would be a little quiet time yet and then the
resurrection. The brother and sister had taken it all very quietly.
Nobody had ever taken anything in any other way in the presence of Mrs.
Weatheral, and