onnet. She did not seem
to notice me till the last words of the service had been read and the
clergyman had gone away; then she came up and spoke to me.

"I couldn't follow along with you," she said, looking at her ragged
shawl, "for I haven't a decent suit of clothes to walk in. I wish I
could get vent in crying for her like you, but I can't; all the crying's
been drudged and starved out of me long ago. Don't you think about
lighting your fire when you get home. I'll do that, and get you a drop
of tea to comfort you."

She seemed on the point of saying a kind word or two more, when, seeing
the beadle coming toward me, she drew back, as if she was afraid of him,
and left the churchyard.

"Here's my subscription toward the funeral," said the beadle, giving me
back his shilling fee. "Don't say anything about it, for it mightn't
be approved of in a business point of view, if it came to some people's
ears. Has the landlord said anything more to you? no, I thought not.
He's too polite a man to give me the trouble of pulling him up. Don't
stop crying here, my dear. Take the advice of a man familiar with
funerals, and go home."

I tried to take his advice, but it seemed like deserting Mary to go away
when all the rest forsook her.

I waited about till the earth was thrown in and the man had left the
place, then I returned to the grave. Oh, how bare and cruel it was,
without so much as a bit of green turf to soften it! Oh, how much harder
it seemed to live than to die, when I stood alone looking at the heavy
piled-up lumps of clay, and thinking of what was hidden beneath them!

I was driven home by my own despairing thoughts. The sight of Sally
lighting the fire in my room eased my heart a little. When she was gone,
I took up Robert's letter again to keep my mind employed on the only
subject in the world that has any interest for it now.

This fresh reading increased the doubts I had already felt relative
to his having remained in America after writing to me. My grief and
forlornness have made a strange alteration in my former feelings about
his coming back. I seem to have lost all my prudence and self-denial,
and to care so little about his poverty, and so much about himself, that
the prospect of his return is really the only comforting thought I have
now to support me. I know this is weak in me, and that his coming back
can l ead to no good result for either of us; but he is the only living
being left me to love; and-