"Don't trouble yerselves to be goin' up. The place is not fit for quality. Lave yer charity with me, an' I'll give it to the childe." Jane insisted on going up. The woman said she would bring Samuel down to them. She seemed anxious to keep them back. But suddenly Samuel himself appeared at a door.
"I knowed ye'd mebby come," he said in a hushed voice as he led them up the stairs. He pushed open a door, and invited them to step in.
"The place is that dirty I hardly like to ask ye," he said. The room was very dirty, but the children hardly noticed this. All their attention was concentrated on the bed where the corpse lay, straight and stiff, covered with a sheet. They stood silently by, awed by the outlines of that rigid figure. Jane began to wish she had not insisted on coming upstairs. But it was their duty to look at the dead. Samuel would be hurt if they did not; he would think they were wanting in respect. She dreaded the moment when he would turn back the sheet, and show them the cold, unnatural face, that would haunt her eyes for days. Breathing a prayer that God would not let her be frightened she stepped forward, and put the wreath at the foot of the bed. As she did so her hand touched something hard. At once fear gave place to suspicion. Under cover of the wreath she felt again, and made sure the corpse was wearing a pair of hobnailed boots. She looked carefully, and saw that the sheet was moved as if by gentle breathing. Samuel, weeping at the head of the bed, never offered to turn back the sheet.
"I'd like to luk at her face," said Jane at last.
Samuel cried more than ever. "Don't ast me," he said. "The poor soul got that thin that I'd be feared for ye to see her."
"God rest her, anyhow," said Mick piously.
"Well, I'm thinkin' that's the quare thing," said Jane, looking hard at Samuel, "not to show a buddy the corpse. I niver heard tell a' the like." Samuel's answer was more tears. Mick and Patsy were both ashamed of their sister.
"I'm thinkin' she's not dead at all," Jane went on.
"Whisht, Jane; are ye clean mad?" Mick remonstrated. Samuel stopped crying. "Can't ye see for yerself she's dead right enough?" he said.
"I'd be surer if I seen her face," said Jane.