might get up, she laid her hand
quickly on his mouth, with a peremptory 'hush! you are dead and we must
bury you.'

But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which followed was
an imitation of the one which had left the Park House three years
before, and which Arthur had watched from his window. Frank was there,
and his wife, and Peterkin, and Jerry imitated the voices of them all,
and when someone bade her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed
Arthur's forehead, and said:

'Good-bye, mamma,' then throwing a thin tidy over his face, she
continued, 'Now, I am going to shut the coffin,' and as she worked at
the corners, as if driving down the screws, Arthur felt as if he were
actually being shut out from life, and light, and the world.

To one of his superstitious tendencies the whole was terribly real, and
when at last she told him he was buried, and the folks had come back,
and he could get up, the sweat was standing upon his face and hands in
great drops, and he felt that he had in very truth been present at the
obsequies of some one, whose death had made an impression so strong upon
Jerry's mind that time had not erased it. There was in his heart no
thought of Gretchen, as there had been in Frank's when he was a
spectator at the play. He had no cause for suspicion, and thought only
of the child whose restlessness and activity were something appalling to
him.

'Now, what shall we play next?' she asked, as he sat white and trembling
in his chair.

'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he groaned, 'I cannot stand any more now.'

'Well, then, you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly.
Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry
responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and
cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the
little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford
limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little,
both to Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom once retorted:

'I would not be so cross as that if I had forty rheumatisses in my
laigs, would you, Harold?'

But Harold only answered, softly:

'Hush, Jerry I you should not speak so to grandmamma, and she so good to
us both, when we haven't any mother.'

Arthur would have laughed, so perfect was the imitation of voice and
gesture, but at the mention of Harold's mother there came into his mind
a vision of sweet Amy Crawford, who