When Jerome got home and opened the kitchen door he stood still with surprise.  It was almost ten o’clock, and his mother and Elmira had begun to make pies.  His mother had pushed herself up to the table and was mixing the pastry, while Elmira was beating eggs.

Mrs. Edwards looked around at Jerome.  “What you standin’ there lookin’ for?” said she, with her sharp, nervous voice.  “Put them shoes down, an’ bring that quart pail of milk out of the pantry.  Be careful you don’t spill it.”

Jerome obeyed.  When he set the milk-pail on the table, Elmira gave him a quick, piteously confidential glance from under her tearful lids.  Elmira, with her blue checked pinafore tied under her chin, sat in a high wooden chair, with her little bare feet curling over a round, and beat eggs with a wooden spoon in a great bowl.

“What you doin’?” asked Jerome.

Her mother answered for her.  “She’s mixin’ up some custard for pies,” said she.  “I dun’no’ as there’s any need of you standin’ lookin’ as if you never saw any before.”

“Never saw you makin’ custard-pies at ten o’clock at night before,” returned Jerome, with blunt defiance.

“Do you s’pose,” said his mother, “that I’m goin’ to let your father go off an’ die all alone an’ take no notice of it?”

“Dun’no’ what you mean?”

“Don’t you know it’s three days since he went off to get that wood an’ never come back?”

Jerome nodded.

“Do you s’pose I’m goin’ to let it pass an’ die away, an’ folks forget him, an’ not have any funeral or anything?  I made up my mind I’d wait until nine o’clock to-night, an’ then, if he wa’n’t found, I wouldn’t wait any longer.  I’d get ready for the funeral.  I’ve sent over for Paulina Maria and your aunt B’lindy to come in an’ help.  Henry come over here to see if I’d heard anything, and I told him to go right home an’ tell his mother to come, an’ stop on the way an’ tell Paulina Maria.  There’s a good deal to do before two o’clock to-morrow afternoon, an’ I can’t do much myself; somebody’s got to help.  In the mornin’ you’ll have to take the horse an’ go over to the West Corners, an’ tell Amelia an’ her mother an’ Lyddy Stokes’s folks.  There won’t be any time to send word to the Greens over in Westbrook.  They’re only second-cousins anyway, an’ they ’ain’t got any horse, an’ I dun’no’ as they’d think they could afford to hire one.  Now you take that fork an’ go an’ lift the cover off that kettle, an’ stick it into the dried apples, an’ see if they’ve begun to get soft.”

Ann Edwards’s little triangular face had grown plainly thinner and older in three days, but the fire in her black eyes still sparkled.  Her voice was strained and hoarse on the high notes, from much lamentation, but she still raised it imperiously.  She held the wooden mixing-bowl in her lap, and stirred with as desperate resolution, compressing her lips painfully, as if she were stirring the dregs of her own cup of sorrow.