went clear out of her head. There was a kind of shame on her face; and when she went along to her friend she could not help exclaiming, "How good you are, Prue!"
"I!" said the other, with some touch of wonder in the upturned face. "I fear that cannot be said of any of us, Judith."
"I would I were like you, sweetheart," was the answer, with a bit of a sigh.
"Like me, Judith?" said Prudence, returning to her task (which was nearly ended now, for she had but few more flowers left). "Nay, what makes you think that? I wish I were far other than I am."
"Look, now," Judith said, "how you are occupied at this moment. Is there another in Stratford that has such a general kindness? How many would think of employing their time so? How many would come away from their own affairs——"
"It may be I have more idle time than many," said Prudence, with a slight flush. "But I commend not myself for this work; in truth, no; 'tis but a pastime; 'tis for my own pleasure."
"Indeed, then, good Prue, you are mistaken, and that I know well," said the other, peremptorily. "Your own pleasure? Is it no pleasure, then, think you, for them that come from time to time, and are right glad to see that some one has been tending the graves of their friends or kinsmen? And do you think, now, it is no pleasure to the poor people themselves—I mean them that are gone—to look at you as you are engaged so, and to think that they are not quite forgotten? Surely it must be a pleasure to them. Surely they cannot have lost all their interest in what happens here—in Stratford—where they lived; and surely they must be grateful to you for thinking of them, and doing them this kindness? I say it were ill done of them else. I say they ought to be thankful to you. And no doubt they are, could we but learn."
"Judith! Judith! you have such a bold way of regarding what is all a mystery to us," said her gentle-eyed friend. "Sometimes you frighten me."
"I would I knew, now," said the other, looking absently across the river to the boys that were playing there, "whether my little brother Hamnet—had you known him you would have loved him as I did, Prudence—I say I wish I knew whether he is quite happy and content where he is, or whether he would not rather be over there now with the other boys. If he looks down and sees them, may it not make him sad sometimes—to be so far away from us? I always think of him as being alone there, and he was never alone here. I suppose he thinks of us sometimes. Whenever I hear the boys shouting like that at their play I think of him; but indeed he was never noisy and unruly. My father used to call him the girl-boy, but he was fonder of him than of all us others; he once came all the way from London when he heard that Hamnet was lying sick of a fever."
She turned to see how Prudence was getting on with her work; but she was in no hurry; and Prudence was patient and scrupulously careful; and the dead, had they been able to speak, would not have bade her cease and go away, for a gentler hand never touched a grave.