I change 'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my
black skin an' keep out the ground!"

Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. "Yessuh, he look tuh me
like somebody awready laid out," he concluded. And upon the stairway
landing, near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were
likewise pessimistic.

"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper. "It give me a turn to see
him go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell
me: d'it make ye kind o' sick to look at um?"

"Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"

"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--"
She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.

It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.

She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do;
and Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long
ago become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his.
She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when
she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the
inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not