Then he went to his father’s door to listen, and when there, too, he heard no sound, he crept on tiptoe to the room where the dead slept. For the last time he would watch by her side.
His sisters, on going away, had spread a white handkerchief over her face; he took it off, folded his hands, and watched how the flickering light played on her waxen features. She was little changed; only the blue veins in her temples were more prominent, and her eyelashes threw deeper shadows on the haggard cheeks.
He lit the night-light, which during her illness had been burning at her bedside every night, seated himself on the chair in which he always used to sit, and thought he would say a quiet prayer for the dead.
But suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had forgotten to send to the joiner to come early and take the measure.
It was to be a simple pine-wood coffin, painted black, and round it a garland of heather, for she had loved the delicate, unpretending little plant above all others.
“What will the coffin cost?” he went on thinking, and was suddenly struck with terror, for he had nothing to bury the dead with. He began to count and calculate, but could come to no conclusion.
“It is the first time that she wants anything for herself,” he said, softly, and thought of the faded dress which she had worn from year’s end to year’s end.
He added up all that he could get together in a hurry from outstanding debts, but the sum was not sufficient by half to cover the expenses of the funeral.
The three cart-loads of peat, too, which he could send into town to-morrow and the day after, would make but little difference.
Then he took a piece of paper and began to calculate the expenses: