The sound grew more and more melancholy to her ears. Each clang of the bell died away like a moan.
Nine.
"Mebby it's some person's only child," she thought.
Ten—eleven.
"It'd be the awful thing to be dead," she muttered, and shivered at the thought of being buried this weather with nothing on but a white nightgown.
Twelve—thirteen—tolled the bell.
"It'd be awfuller to be goin' to Mick's feeneral," she said. The thought made her heart sick.
She jumped up to go home—she could come back when more snowdrops were out—but she caught sight of a long black line, slowly climbing up to the church by the road from town. The sight of a funeral always depressed Jane, but there was something specially gloomy about this one. The wet road looked so cold, the sky so grey, and the black hearse and six mourning carriages came heavily along, as though they were weighed down by grief.
Jane began to say her prayers. It was an awful world God had made, and He might let one of them die if she didn't pray hard to Him.
The bell went on tolling. It had got past twenty by the time her prayer was said. The funeral was so near that she could see the mourners behind the hearse. There were six tall men in black; two of them walked in front of the others. They were the chief mourners. Perhaps it was their sister who was in the hearse. The bell tolled oft till it was past thirty; the funeral came nearer and nearer.