“She’s left us this time, she’s really gone,” and the excited news-bringer burst into tears.  The poor soul was completely overwrought; she looked tired and wan, as if she had spent her forces in sympathy as well as hard work.  She felt in her great bundle for a pocket handkerchief, but was not successful in the search, and finally produced a faded gingham apron with long, narrow strings, with which she hastily dried her tears.  The sad news appealed also to Mercy Crane, who looked across to the apple-trees, and could not see them for a dazzle of tears in her own eyes.  The spectacle of Sarah Ellen Dow going home with her humble workaday possessions, from the house where she had gone in haste only a few days before to care for a sick person well known to them both, was a very sad sight.

“You sent word yesterday that you should be returnin’ early this afternoon, and would stop.  I presume I received the message as you gave it?” asked Mrs. Crane, who was tenacious in such matters; “but I do declare I never looked to hear she was gone.”

“She’s been failin’ right along sence yisterday about this time,” said the nurse.  “She’s taken no notice to speak of, an’ been eatin’ the vally o’ nothin’, I may say, sence I went there a-Tuesday.  Her sisters both come back yisterday, an’ of course I was expected to give up charge to them.  They’re used to sickness, an’ both havin’ such a name for bein’ great housekeepers!”

Sarah Ellen spoke with bitterness, but Mrs. Crane was reminded instantly of her own affairs.  “I feel condemned that I ain’t begun my own fall cleanin’ yet,” she said, with an ostentatious sigh.

“Plenty o’ time to worry about that,” her friend hastened to console her.

“I do desire to have everything decent about my house,” resumed Mrs. Crane.  “There’s nobody to do anything but me.  If I was to be taken away sudden myself, I shouldn’t want to have it said afterwards that there was wisps under my sofy or—­There!  I can’t dwell on my own troubles with Sister Barsett’s loss right before me.  I can’t seem to believe she’s really passed away; she always was saying she should go in some o’ these spells, but I deemed her to be troubled with narves.”

Sarah Ellen Dow shook her head.  “I’m all nerved up myself,” she said brokenly.  “I made light of her sickness when I went there first, I’d seen her what she called dreadful low so many times; but I saw her looks this morning, an’ I begun to believe her at last.  Them sisters o’ hers is the master for unfeelin’ hearts.  Sister Barsett was a-layin’ there yisterday, an’ one of ’em was a-settin’ right by her tellin’ how difficult ’t was for her to leave home, her niece was goin’ to graduate to the high school, an’ they was goin’ to have a time in the evening, an’ all the exercises promised to be extry interesting.  Poor Sister Barsett knew what she said an’ looked at her with contempt, an’ then she give a glance at me an’ closed up her eyes as if ’t was for the last time.  I know she felt it.”