"Why, Mis' Spencer, what's the matter? I hope nothin's gone wrong?"
Mrs. Spencer's sobs ceased, and her face hardened, as she met the woman's inquiring eyes.
"'t ain't nothin' that I want to talk about, Mis' Howard. I've about got to the end of my rope, that's all. I'm tired of livin', and wish to heaven I was dead this minute."
Mrs. Howard held up her hands.
"Don't say that, Mis' Spencer," she remonstrated. "Now, I don't know what's gone wrong, and I hain't the least notion of tryin' to find out; I only beg of you not to wish you was dead. It's such a fearful wish, what death is."
"We all know it's rest, and that's all I care to know," said Mrs. Spencer. She leaned her chin on her hands, her elbows on her knees, and gazed into vacancy with red-rimmed, unlovely eyes.
"No, we don't even know that," said Mrs. Howard, with impressive earnestness. "That's just one of the things we've been taught, and we like to think it's so. We don't know the first thing about death, Mis' Spencer, except that it turns us cold and stiff and fits us for the grave. We don't any of us know what goes with the livin', thinkin', sufferin' part of us. Sometimes I think maybe it stays with us in the grave, so that we hear and know things, same as when we was livin'. I shouldn't wonder if we could lay in our graves and hear the birds singin', and the rain fallin', and feel the sun shinin' above us. Now, s'posin' you was in your grave, out there in the little buryin' ground in the medder, and s'posin' you could hear these little chicks chipin' to be fed at sundown, and you not here to feed 'em; and the cows comin' up the lane to be milked, and you not here to milk 'em; and your husband trudgin' home, slow and tired and hungry, and you not here to get supper for him. Do you reckon you could rest then, Mis' Spencer?
"And s'posin' that after a bit you'd hear some other woman's voice a-callin' the chickens, and some other woman's hands rattlin' the stove-lids around a-startin' a fire to cook supper for your husband. You'd most likely want to get up out of your grave then, but you couldn't. You'd just have to lay there and hear things goin' on without you, day in and day out, year in and year out, and watch yourself goin' to pieces inch by inch and crumblin' to dust. There wouldn't be much rest about that, Mis' Spencer, would there, now?"
Mrs. Spencer arose with the slow painfulness of stiffened rheumatic joints, and turned a shocked, resentful face upon her visitor.
"Mis' Howard," she said, sternly, "if I found a fellow mortal in trouble, and couldn't think of a single comfortin' thing to say to her, I'd go away and leave her alone; I wouldn't try to knock out the last prop from under her. If a body can't b'lieve in the rest that's in the grave, I'd like to know what we can b'lieve in! I never heard such scand'lous doctrine since I was born!"
She turned abruptly and went into the house; closing the door between herself and her unorthodox neighbor, and listened until the sound of receding footsteps died away.
"There, I hope she's gone, with her croakin'. I was that afeard that she'd hang around and hinder me too long. Land, four o'clock a-ready!"—as a timepiece in an inner room gave four hard, metallic strokes. She hurried into the bedroom and came out rolling a pair of heavy gray blankets into an uncouth bundle. Then she took a bottle from a shelf in the pantry and filled it with rich, sweet milk. As she put the cork in she suddenly stopped and listened, then opened the door a little way and listened again, intently.
"Wheels!" she ejaculated. "Now, if it should be them, goodness help me to get into the cornfield before they come in sight!"
She caught up the blankets, and snatched a raspberry pie, in its tin plate, from the table. Thus equipped for flight, she opened the door and went hurriedly out. At the foot of the steps the brood of little chickens met her in full force, fluttering around her feet and impeding her progress.
"Shoo! Shoo!"
She pushed them aside with one foot, and waved the pie at them frantically; but they followed close at her skirts, with dismal chirps that went to her heart.
"Poor little things, how well they know it's their supper-time. If I'd only had time to feed 'em. Like as not nobody else 'll do it."
She hesitated and looked back at them, pityingly. But the rattle of wheels sounded closer now, and her heart hardened. She went on again, striving to redouble her speed; but the blankets were cumbersome, and the raspberry pie was shedding its sticky juice up her sleeve.
