As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen.  The snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch—­the nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant glazier with his frame of glass on his back—­resumed it, but still eyed her from time to time.  In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs.  Her hair, almost as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head a la Marquise; she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked softly in the old walnut chair.

“Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough there,” the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went to the porch with the message.

“Thank you, little missie—­thank you, lady dear—­Annabel is quite warm,” said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.

It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played.  The hand of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were painted on her calves of fibrous plaster.  For the greater solemnity, the children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls, the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate hair—­long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down her back that she could almost sit on it.  A cylindrical-bodied horse, convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a locomotive, headed the sad cortege; then came the defunct Flora; then came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children followed with hushed whisperings.

The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which the old lady sat.  She stopped.

“Aunt Rachel—­” she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and closing very tight her eyes.

“Yes, dear?”

“Flora’s dead!”

The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her faded cheeks.  So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering, when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it.  Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.

“I’m so sorry, dear,” Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said.  “What did she die of this time?”

“She died of ...  Brown Titus ... ’n now she’s going to be buried in a grave as little as her bed.”

“In a what, dear?”

“As little ... dread ... as little as my bed ... you say it, Sabrina.”

“She means, Aunt Rachel,