and glasses and talking to each other.

"Well, I like company," she heard Sarah say. "I wish she'd have
somebody in every day."

And Maggie's harsh murmur: "You ain't got to cook for 'em." Then the
clatter of forks and spoons in the pantry.

"Seemed to me like as if she wasn't real glad to see 'em," Sarah
commented. "My! look at all this here good cake crumbled up on
somebody's plate."

"Well, a widow woman don't enjoy company," Maggie explained.

A minute later Sarah came bustling in to close the parlor windows for
the night, and started to find the room still occupied. "I thought you
had gone upstairs, ma'am," the girl stammered, wondering nervously if
she had said anything that she would not care to have overheard.

"I am going now," Mrs. Richie said, drawing a long breath, and opening
and shutting her eyes in a dazed way;--"like as if she'd been asleep
and was woke up, sudden," Sarah told Maggie later.

In her own room, the door locked, she sank down in a chair, her
clasped hands falling between her knees, her eyes staring at the
floor.

_Dead._

How long he had been about dying. Thirteen years ago Lloyd had said,