Over my grave keep the green willers growing.

The yellow harvest moon flooded the room with its soft light.  She could see through the window how it lay like a mantle on the silent fields.  It was one of those glorious, cloudless nights, with a hint of frost in the air that come just as the grain is ripening.  From some place down the creek a dog barked; once in a while a cow-bell tinkled:  a horse stamped in the stable and then all was still.  Numberless stars shone through the window.  The mystery of life and death and growing things was around her.  As for man his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth—­for it is soon cut off and we fly away—­fly away where?—­where?—­her head throbbed with the question.

The eastern sky flushed red with morning; a little ripple came over the grain.  She watched it listlessly.  Polly had died at daybreak—­didn’t the letter say?  Just like that, the light rising redder and redder, the stars disappearing, she wondered dully to herself how often she would see the light coming, like this, and yet, and yet, some time would be the last, and then what?

   We shall be where suns are not,
      A far serener clime.

came to her memory she knew not from whence.  But she shuddered at it.  Polly’s eyes, dazed, pleading like the lamb’s, rose before her; or was it that Other Face, tender, thorn-crowned, that had been looking upon her in love all these long years!

She spoke so kindly to Pearl when she went into the kitchen that the little girl looked up apprehensively.

“Are ye not well, ma’am?” she asked quickly.

Mrs. Motherwell hesitated.

“I did not sleep very well,” she said, at last.

“That’s the mortgage,” Pearl thought to herself.

“And when I did sleep, I had such dreadful dreams,” Mrs. Motherwell went on, strangely communicative.

“That looks more like the cancer,” Pearl thought as she stirred the porridge.

“We got bad news,” Mrs. Motherwell said.  “Polly is dead.”

Pearl stopped stirring the porridge.

“When did she die,” she asked eagerly.

“The morning before yesterday morning, about daylight.”

Pearl made a rapid calculation.  “Oh good!” she cried, “goody—­goody—­goody!  They were in time.”

She saw her mistake in a moment, and hastily put her hand over her mouth as if to prevent the unruly member from further indiscretions.  She stirred the porridge vigorously, while her cheeks burned.

“Yes, they were,” Mrs. Motherwell said quietly.

Pearl set the porridge on the back of the stove and ran out to where the poppies nodded gaily.  Never before had they seemed so beautiful.  Mrs. Motherwell watched her through the window bending over them.  Something about the poppies appealed to her now.  She had once wanted Tom to cut them down, and she thought of it now.

She tapped on the window.  Pearl looked up, startled.