and kissed the rosy, anxious face, "Maurice's wife isn't old at all.
She's quite young. It's only that he is so much younger."

Edith lapsed into silence. She was very quiet for the rest of that
summer morning. Just before dinner she went across the west pasture to
Doctor Bennett's house, and, hailing Johnny, told him the news. His
indifference--for he only looked at her, with his mild, nearsighted
brown eyes, and said, "Huh?"--irritated her so that she would not
confide her dismay at Maurice's approaching widowerhood, but ran home
to a sympathetic kitchen: "Katy! Maurice got eloped!"

Katy was much more satisfactory than Johnny; she said, "God save us!
Mr. Maurice eloped? Who with, then? Well, well!" But Edith was still
abstracted. Time, as related to life, had acquired significance. At
dinner she regarded her father with troubled eyes. He, too, was old,
like Maurice's wife. He, too, as well as the bride, and her mother,
would die, sometime. And she and Maurice would have such awful
grief!... Something tightened in her throat; "Please 'scuse me," she
said, in a muffled voice; and, slipping out of her chair, made a dash
for the back door, and ran as hard as she could to her chicken house.
The little place was hot, and smelled of feathers; through the windows,
cobwebbed and dusty, the sunshine fell dimly on the hard earth floor, and
on an empty plate or two and a rusty, overturned tin pan. Here, sitting
on a convenient box, she could think things out undisturbed: Maurice, and
his lovely, dying Bride; herself, orphaned and alone; Johnny Bennett,
indifferent to all this oncoming grief! Probably Maurice was worrying
about it all the time! How long would the Bride live? Suddenly she
remembered her mother's age, and had a revulsion of hope for Maurice.
Perhaps his wife would live to be as old as mother? "Why, I hadn't
thought of that! Well, then, she will live--let's see: thirty-nine from