'tisn' bad by no means. Come yer,
Jimmy an' Tommy. Do 'ee know who that ther is?"

"Rosie!" whispered Jimmy.

"What was took up to cementry," added Tommy in a brighter voice.

"Iss, 'tis our li'l Rosie to the life (mustn' touch), jest like her
was."

A moment's tension; then, "A surprise for 'ee, en' it?" Mrs Widger
enquired.

"My ol' geyser!"

The children's riot began again. "Our Rosie...." they were saying. Mam
'Idger, slipping out of Tony's grasp, carried the picture off to the
front room. She was sometime gone.

Wordsworth's _We are Seven_ came into my mind:

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

I knew, of course, intellectually, that the poem records more than a
child's mere fancy; but never before have I felt its truth, have I been
caught up, so to speak, into the atmosphere of the wise, simple souls
who are able to rob death of the worst of its sting by refusing to let
the dead die altogether, even on earth. Rosie is dead and buried. I
perceive also--I perceived, while Tony and the children stood round
that picture--that Rosie is still here, in this house, hallowing it a
little. The one statement is as much a fact as the other; but how much
more delicately intangible, and perhaps how much truer, the second.

11

[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S DEATH_]

While we waited for Tony to come in to supper, Mrs Widger told me about
Rosie's death. "It must be awful," she said, "to lose a child fo them
as an't got nor more. I know how I felt it when Rosie was took. Nothing
would please me for months after but to go up to the cementry, to her
little grave. 'Most every evening I walked up after tea--didn' feel as
if I could go to bed an' sleep wi'out. Tony had to fend for hisself if
he wanted his supper early. Ther wasn't no reason, but it did ease me,
like, to go up there, an' it heartened me a little for next day's work.
'Twas a sort o' habit, p'raps. What broke me of it was my bad illness.
[When the twins, 'what nobody didn' know nort about,' were born.] At
first, I used to think o' Rosie, when I were lyin' alone upstairs, most
'specially at night time if Tony wer out to sea an' it come'd on to
blow a bit. I used to think, if ort happened to Tony.... Our room to
the top o' the house, sways when it do blow. I don't trouble me head
about Tony when he's to