"He's a good man," murmured the minister's wife, watching them go.
She had known he would go.

"He was one of my parishioners," the minister was saying for the
comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as
one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already
big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense.

Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary:

"Tomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes of three this afternoon
blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get
here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good
minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold
ground and we sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was
only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very
lonesome. I dred wakening up tomorrow because he always crowed under
my window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away."

This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after a
moment's thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt
Olivia which had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive
little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some
people's was very small. Not Aunt Olivia's--she had never gauged Aunt
Olivia's Lord part; it would not have been consistent with her ideas
of loyalty.

It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At best
her life had never been overfull of companionships, and the sudden