It was only for a little while, until they could hear from the girls, and make plans.  Grant Ledwith’s income died with him; there was ten thousand dollars, life insurance; that would give them a little more than a sixth part of what his salary had been; and there were the two thousand a year of Uncle Titus; and the house, on which there was a twelve thousand dollar mortgage.

Mrs. Ledwith had spent her life in cutting and turning and planning; after the first shock was over, even her grief was counterpoised and abated, by the absorption of her thoughts into the old channels.  What they should do, how they should live, what they could have; how it should be contrived and arranged.  Her mind busied itself with all this, and her trouble was veiled,—­softened.  She had a dozen different visions and schemes, projected into their details of residence, establishment, dress, ordering,—­before the letters came, bringing back the first terribleness in the first reception of and response to it, of her elder children.

It was so awful to have them away,—­on the other side of the world!  If they were only once all together again!  Families ought not to separate.  But then, it had been for their good; how could she have imagined?  She supposed she should have done the same again, under the same circumstances.

And then came Mrs. Megilp’s letter, delayed a mail, as she would have delayed entering the room, if they had been rejoined in their grief, until the family had first been gathered together with their tears and their embraces.

Then she wrote,—­as she would have come in; and her letter, as her visit would have been, was after a few words of tender condolence,—­and they were very sweet and tender, for Mrs. Megilp knew how to lay phrases like illuminating gold-leaf upon her meaning,—­eminently practical and friendly, full of judicious, not to say mitigating, suggestions.

It was well, she thought, that Agatha and Florence were with her.  They had been spared so much; and perhaps if all this had happened first, they might never have come.  As to their return, she thought it would be a pity; “it could not make it really any better for you,” she said; “and while your plans are unsettled, the fewer you are, the more easily you will manage.  It seems hard to shadow their young lives more than is inevitable; and new scenes and interests are the very best things for them; their year of mourning would be fairly blotted out at home, you know.  For yourself, poor friend, of course you cannot care; and Desire and Helena are not much come forward, but it would be a dead blank and stop to them, so much lost, right out; and I feel as if it were a kind Providence for the dear girls that they should be just where they are.  We are living quietly, inexpensively; it will cost no more to come home at one time than at another;” etc.

There are persons to whom the pastime of life is the whole business of it; sickness and death and misfortune,—­to say nothing of cares and duties—­are the interruptions, to be got rid of as they may.