he was thankful for the black veil
that shielded her. Winnebago was scandalized to see that she wore no
other black. Mrs. Brandeis had never wanted Fanny to wear it; she hadn't
enough color, she said. So now she was dressed in her winter suit of
blue, and her hat with the pert blue quill. And the little rabbi's voice
went on and on, and Fanny knew that it could not be true. What had all
this dust-to-dust talk to do with any one as vital, and electric, and
constructive as Molly Brandeis. In the midst of the service there was a
sharp cry, and a little stir, and the sound of stifled sobbing. It was
Aloysius the merry, Aloysius the faithful, whose Irish heart was quite
broken. Fanny ground her teeth together in an effort at self-control.

And so to the end, and out past the little hushed, respectful group
on the porch, to the Jewish cemetery on the state road. The snow of
Christmas week was quite virgin there, except for that one spot where
the sexton and his men had been at work. Then back at a smart jog trot
through the early dusk of the winter afternoon, the carriage wheels
creaking upon the hard, dry snow. And Fanny Brandeis said to herself
(she must have been a little light-headed from hunger and weeping):

"Now I'll know whether it's true or not. When I go into the house. If
she's there she'll say, `Well Fanchen! Hungry? Oh, but my little girl's
hands are cold! Come here to the register and warm them.' O God, let her
be there! Let her be there!"

But she wasn't. The house had been set to rights by brisk and
unaccustomed hands. There was a bustle and stir in the dining-room, and
from the kitchen came the appetizing odors of cooking food. Fanny went
up to a chair that was out of its place, and shoved it back against the
wall where it belonged. She straightened a rug, carried the waste basket
from the desk to the spot near the living-room table where it had always
served to hide the shabby, worn place in the rug. Fanny went up-stairs,
past The Room that was once more just a comfortable, old fashioned
bedroom, instead of a mysterious and awful chamber; bathed her face,
tidied her hair, came down-stairs again, ate and drank things hot and
revivifying. The house was full of kindly women.

Fanny found herself clinging to them--clinging desperately to these
ample, broad-bosomed, soothing women whom she had scarcely known before.
They were always there, those women, and their husbands too; kindly,
awkward men, who patted he