Marie was as active in her sabots as she had ever been.

In spite of the age of both, and the infirmity of one, every Saturday
night there was some little thing to put under the brick in the
hearth, for taxes and license, and the never-to-be-forgotten funeral
provision. In the husband's time gold pieces used to go in, but they
had all gone to pay for the four funerals and the quadrupled doctor's
bill. The women laid in silver pieces; the coins, however, grew
smaller and smaller, and represented more and more not so much the
gain from onions as the saving from food.

It had been explained to them how they might, all at once, make a
year's gain in the lottery; and it had become their custom always, at
the end of every month, to put aside one silver coin apiece, to buy a
lottery ticket with--one ticket each, not for the great, but for the
twenty-five-cent, prizes. Anne Marie would buy hers round about the
market; Jeanne Marie would stop anywhere along her milk course and buy
hers, and they would go together in the afternoon to stand with the
little crowd watching the placard upon which the winning numbers were
to be written. And when they were written, it was curious, Jeanne
Marie's numbers would come out twice as often as Anne Marie's. Not
that she ever won anything, for she was not lucky enough to have them
come out in the order to win; they only came out here and there,
singly: but it was sufficient to make old Anne Marie cross and ugly
for a day or two, and injure the sale of the onion-basket. When she
became bedridden, Jeanne Marie bought the ticket for both, on the
numbers, however, that Anne Marie gave her; and Anne Marie had to lie
in bed and wait, while Jeanne Marie went out to watch the placard.

One evening, watching it, Jeanne Marie saw the ticket-agent write out