“To-morrow,” she waved one hand, the other holding the tattered dress skirt with its burden of coins.
Half an hour later Mrs. Hawkins, coming to the box wagon to find out why the travellers had not appeared for their supper, found Thurley and her father kneeling beside the lounge.
“She must have died just as I come in,” Mrs. Hawkins told the neighbors. “Poor little lamb, blessed if she didn’t start right in to comfort that miserable dad of hers! Well, I guess them hosses will stay unhitched for some time to come!”
CHAPTER III
The sale of the nags brought enough to pay for the burial of Mrs. Precore. After which Betsey Pilrig sent word to have some one wheel the wagon up to the empty pasture land, across from her house, where it could stay as long as was necessary, at least until they had enough money to buy more horses and go somewhere else.
So the dingy white wagon was anchored across from Betsey Pilrig’s, to Philena’s delight, and, while Thurley’s father stayed inside to sob in half-drunken fashion about “his loss,” Thurley made rapid inroads on Betsey’s and Philena’s hearts.
For that matter, she had made inroads upon the hearts of Birge’s Corners en masse. Even Lorraine loaned her a black hat for the funeral and stripped her garden of late blossoms to lay in the wasted fingers.
Thurley had sung at her mother’s funeral. “They always have music,” she told them, and, besides, “it made her feel better inside.” So, standing at the newly dug grave, the curious mourners watched this long-legged, blue-eyed child-woman in every one’s discarded black clothes sing bravely: