Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him home ... could do no good—now.
“Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders.”
Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her because of the pain.... Better come away.
She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all crumpled up....
Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over the twisted face.
III.
Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but to which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin touched the earth seven feet down....
Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of lists. And then the word LOT. “Lot I,” “Lot 2,” “Lot 50,” “Lot 200”—a hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep, producing grotesque nightmares, as “Lot 12, a polished oak coffin, finished plain, brass Handles.”
No! No! That was not to be sold!—leaden hands holding her down; stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting “Stop!”