"'Up-un my word,' s'she, like a cut, 'if this ain't a pretty note. What under the sun are you doin' sittin' there, Elspie, with my flowers?'
"Elspie looked up an' see her, an' see us streamin' toward her over the hill.
"'They ain't your flowers, are they?' s'she, quiet. 'They're the dead's. I was a-goin' to take 'em back in a minute or two, anyway, an' I'll take 'em back now.'
"She got up, simple an' natural, an' picked up the fruit piece an' one o' the pillows, an' started up the hill.
"'Well, I nev-er,' says Mis' Merriman; 'the very bare brazenness. Ain't you goin' to tell me what you're doin' here with the flowers you say is the dead's, an' I'm sure what was Sum's is mine an' the dead's the same—'
"She begun to cry a little, an' with that Elspie looks up at her, troubled.
"'I didn't mean to make you cry,' she says. 'I didn't mean you should know anything about it. I come early to do it—I thought you wouldn't know.'
"'Do what?' says Mis' Merriman, rill snappish.
"Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An' when she sees Eb an' me standin' together, she give us a little smile—an' she sort o' answered to us two.
"'Why,' she says, 'I ain't got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive, that belongs. The dead is all other folks's dead, an' the livin' is all other folks's folks. An' when I see all the graves down here that they don't nobody know who's they are, I thought mebbe one of 'em wouldn't care—if I kind of—adopted it.'