meant. He heard the stiff unseasoned drawer, in which his wife kept
her clothes, pulled open. He saw the neighbour come down, and
blunder about in search of soap and water. He knew well what she
wanted, and WHY she wanted them, but he did not speak nor offer to
help. At last she went, with some kindly meant words (a text of
comfort, which fell upon a deafened ear), and something about
"Mary," but which Mary, in his bewildered state, he could not tell.

He tried to realise it--to think it possible. And then his mind
wandered off to other days, to far different times. He thought of
their courtship; of his first seeing her, an awkward beautiful
rustic, far too shiftless for the delicate factory work to which she
was apprenticed; of his first gift to her, a bead necklace, which
had long ago been put by, in one of the deep drawers of the dresser,
to be kept for Mary. He wondered if it was there yet, and with a
strange curiosity he got up to feel for it; for the fire by this
time was well nigh out, and candle he had none. His groping hand
fell on the piled-up tea-things, which at his desire she had left
unwashed till morning--they were all so tired. He was reminded of
one of the daily little actions, which acquire such power when they
have been performed for the last time by one we love. He began to
think over his wife's daily round of duties: and something in the
remembrance that these would never more be done by her, touched the
source of tears, and he cried aloud. Poor Mary, meanwhile, had
mechanically helped the neighbour in all the last attentions to the
dead; and when she was kissed and spoken to soothingly, tears stole
quietly down her cheeks; but she reserved the luxury of a full burst
of grief till she should be alone. She shut the chamber-door
softly, after the neighbour was gone, and then shook the bed by
which she knelt with her agony of sorrow. She repeated, over and