dow, full of daisies and pinks,
and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds were just a little ways
on--where the sun was--it didn't look--wasn't we happy?"

"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought
Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Is your
fever risin'?"

"But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds," she went on, waiting a
little, "when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place--has been always behind
me, and the dark before me. Oh, if I was only there--in the sun--where
the pinks and daisies are!"

"You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children! You ain't sorry
y'had them? They've been a comfort to y'? You ain't sorry you had 'em?"

"I ain't glad," was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and
then she went on, in growing excitement: "They'll haf to grow old jest
as I have--git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't be'n much comfort to
me: the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no
happiness--for such as me and them."

She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did
better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face and the hands,
getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had
been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it
burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts
and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her
brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterence. Now that death
was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff.
Martha was appalled.

"I used to think--that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy; but I
never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I
never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've
gone further an' further from the sunshiny meadow, an' the birds an'
flowers--and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!" She ended with a
sob and a low wail.

Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her
straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the
meadow.

"Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in--and
you girls are there--an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild
sunflower--'rich man, poor man, beggar man'--and I hear you all laugh
when I pull off the last leaf; and then I come to myself--and I'm an
old, dried-up woman, dyin'--unsatisfied!"

"I've