Old Mrs. Myrover was inconsolable.  She ascribed her daughter’s death to her labors as teacher of negro children.  Just how the color of the pupils had produced the fatal effects she did not stop to explain.  But she was too old, and had suffered too deeply from the war, in body and mind and estate, ever to reconcile herself to the changed order of things following the return of peace; and, with an unsound yet perfectly explainable logic, she visited some of her displeasure upon those who had profited most, though passively, by her losses.

“I always feared something would happen to Mary,” she said.  “It seemed unnatural for her to be wearing herself out teaching little negroes who ought to have been working for her.  But the world has hardly been a fit place to live in since the war, and when I follow her, as I must before long, I shall not be sorry to go.”

She gave strict orders that no colored people should be admitted to the house.  Some of her friends heard of this, and remonstrated.  They knew the teacher was loved by the pupils, and felt that sincere respect from the humble would be a worthy tribute to the proudest.  But Mrs. Myrover was obdurate.

“They had my daughter when she was alive,” she said, “and they ’ve killed her.  But she ’s mine now, and I won’t have them come near her.  I don’t want one of them at the funeral or anywhere around.”

For a month before Miss Myrover’s death Sophy had been watching her rosebush—­the one that bore the yellow roses—­for the first buds of spring, and, when these appeared, had awaited impatiently their gradual unfolding.  But not until her teacher’s death had they become full-blown roses.  When Miss Myrover died, Sophy determined to pluck the roses and lay them on her coffin.  Perhaps, she thought, they might even put them in her hand or on her breast.  For Sophy remembered Miss Myrover’s thanks and praise when she had brought her the yellow roses the spring before.

On the morning of the day set for the funeral, Sophy washed her face until it shone, combed and brushed her hair with painful conscientiousness, put on her best frock, plucked her yellow roses, and, tying them with the treasured ribbon her teacher had given her, set out for Miss Myrover’s home.

She went round to the side gate—­the house stood on a corner—­and stole up the path to the kitchen.  A colored woman, whom she did not know, came to the door.

“Wat yer want, chile?” she inquired.

“Kin I see Miss Ma’y?” asked Sophy timidly.

“I don’t know, honey.  Ole Miss Myrover say she don’t want no cullud folks roun’ de house endyoin’ dis fun’al.  I ‘ll look an’ see if she ’s roun’ de front room, whar de co’pse is.  You sed down heah an’ keep still, an’ ef she ’s upstairs maybe I kin git yer in dere a minute.  Ef I can’t, I kin put yo’ bokay ‘mongs’ de res’, whar she won’t know nuthin’ erbout it.”

A moment after she had gone, there was a step in the hall, and old Mrs. Myrover came into the kitchen.