"Oh yes, yes—I quite understand—good afternoon. Good-bye, children, you have sung very nicely indeed."
"Now," said I to myself, when I was safely out in the street again, "I am going home."
"Oh, not yet," at once protested my unmanageable conscience; "your favourite old woman lives in the next cottage, and surely you are not going to leave her out?"
"I see plainly," I replied, "that I shall never be quite comfortable till I have got rid of you" and in I went to the next house.
The entrance was full of three women—the entrances here are narrow, and the women wide—and they all looked more cheerful than seemed reasonable. They stood aside to let me pass, and when I opened the door I found the room equally full of women, looking equally happy, and talking eagerly.
"Why, what is happening?" I asked the nearest one. "Is there a party?"
She turned round, grinning broadly in obvious delight. "The old lady died in her sleep," she said, "and was found this morning dead in her bed. I was in here only yesterday, and she said—" I turned abruptly and went out again. All those gloating women, hovering round the poor body that was clothed on a sudden by death with a wonderful dignity and nobleness, made me ashamed of being a woman. Not a man was there,— clearly a superior race of beings. In the entrance I met the Frau Inspector coming in to arrange matters, and she turned and walked with me a little way.
"The old lady was better off than we thought," she remarked, "and has left a very good black silk dress to be buried in."
"A black silk dress?" I repeated.
"And everything to match in goodness—nice leather shoes, good stockings, under-things all trimmed with crochet, real whalebone corsets, and a quite new pair of white kid gloves. She must have saved for a long time to have it all so nice."