IV.
LIFE WITH MRS. GRAY.
The events of the next few days were like a troubled dream to Rosa, as she in vain endeavored to comprehend the meaning of all the mysterious things going on about her. Only once was she allowed to look upon the silent sleeper. That was just before the arrival of the great black carriage, which, she was sure, would take her mother to the beautiful land.
"Rosa ain't goin' to the burial, I can tell you that," announced Mrs. Gray to a neighbor, "or she'd be a-hollerin' in her sleep all winter. I've been broke of my rest so much that I ain't goin' to be bothered with her any more'n I can help from now on. I didn't promise to keep her only till spring, but I can make her run errands and sich, so it won't cost me a great sight. I can't afford it no other way, and Mis' Browning was unreasonable, anyhow, to ask it of me."
Rosa and grandpa stood hand in hand, watching the small procession until it disappeared around the corner.
"Grandpa," queried Rosa in a tearful voice, "do you know where that beautiful land is where folks never cough no more, and where they don't have to pay rent? That's where mother's going, and she told me to find out the way, so I could go too."
"'Pears like I'd ought to know, child, fer that's where Tom went. I can't think much somehow, but, Rosa," he added tenderly, drawing her up closer to his side, "I don't want you to go and leave me, fer I'm so lonesome. Sary's a good woman, yes, a very good woman, but it seems like I need you, too, dearie."
"Grandpa, if we'd start out together, don't you think we could find it? Folks have all they want to eat there, and I'm hungry now."
"Why, yes, yes, mebbe we could! Some way I'm gittin' homesick. I don't like it here in the city, and it seems like I used to know more about that land than I do now. Since poor Tom got killed, I can't remember no how.
"Sometimes in the night I git that happy, but if I make a little noise, Sary wakes me up, 'cause it bothers her, then that spoils it all. I think I'm back in the country ag'in, and the church bell is a-ringin' of a Sunday mornin'. Tom's mother and me start out from the little cottage, and I'm a-carryin' Tom. We walk down the cool grassy lane with the brook a-runnin' on one side, and the trees is a-wavin' in the soft breeze, and the birds is a-singin', and Tom's mother stops to pick some wild roses. And the little white meetin' house with the steeple a-p'intin' straight up. My Rosa, I wish you could see it, and with vines a-growin' all over it! I can 'most git it, then it slips away ag'in. If I could jest be inside of that meetin' house once more, it would all come straight, I know, fer there they used to talk and sing about that land and Jesus."