"It's all right, Mame. You can look at her asleep before you go."
They tiptoed to the front room and raised the shades gently. Angie lay in the cold sleep of death, her wax-like hands folded on her flat breast, and quiet, as if the grubbing years had fallen from her like a husk; and in their place a madonna calm, a sleep, and a forgetting. They regarded her; the sobs rising in their throats.
"She looks just like she fell asleep, Til—only younger-like. And, say, but that is a swell coffin, dearie!"
Like Niobe all tears, Tillie dabbed at her eyes and dewy cheeks.
"She was always kicking—poor dear!—at having to pay a dime a week to the Mutual Aid; but she'd be glad if she could see—first-class undertaking and all—everything paid for."
"I've kicked more'n once, too, but I'm glad I belong now. Honest, for a dime a week—silver handles and all. Poor Angie! Poor Angie!"
Poor Angie, indeed! who never in all the forty-odd years of her life had been so rich; with her head on a decent satin pillow, and a white carnation at her breast; her black-and-white dotted foulard dress draped skilfully about her; and her feet, that would never more ache, resting upward like a doll's in its box!
"Oh, Gawd, ain't I all alone, though; ain't I, though?"
"Aw, Til!"
"I—I—Oh—"