doll being already Rose, the little one became Rosette.

Mary-'Gusta was not playing with Rose and Rosette at the present time.
Neither was she interested in the peaceful slumbers of David. She was
not playing at all, but sitting, with feet crossed beneath her on the
seat and hands clasped about one knee, thinking. And, although she was
thinking of her stepfather who she knew had gone away to a vague place
called Heaven--a place variously described by Mrs. Bailey, the former
housekeeper, and by Mrs. Susan Hobbs, the present one, and by Mr. Howes,
the Sunday school superintendent--she was thinking most of herself, Mary
Augusta Lathrop, who was going to a funeral that very afternoon and,
after that, no one seemed to know exactly where.

It was a beautiful April day and the doors of the carriage house and
the big door of the barn were wide open. Mary-'Gusta could hear the hens
clucking and the voices of people talking. The voices were two: one was
that of Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper, and the other belonged to Mr. Abner
Hallett, the undertaker. Mary-'Gusta did not like Mr. Hallett's voice;
she liked neither it nor its owner's manner; she described both voice
and manner to herself as "too soothy." They gave her the shivers.

Mr. Hallett's tone was subdued at the present time, but a trifle of the
professional "soothiness" was lacking. He and Mrs. Hobbs were conversing
briskly enough and, although Mary-'Gusta could catch only a word or two
at intervals, she was perfectly sure they were talking about her. She
was certain that if she were to appear at that moment in the door of the
barn they would stop talking immediately and look at her. Everybody whom
she had met during the past two days looked at her in that queer way. It
made her feel as if she had something catching, like the measles, and as
if, somehow or other, she was to blame.