duties, was because death came with such steady, appreciable,
unfrightening steps. First the riding stopped, and then the walks made
shorter and shorter; then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then
carrying the couch out under the trees--and none of them very fearful,
because prepared: it was to be--almost the very day could have been
named. Thus, when it came, though the blow swooped heavy, terrific,
she never seemed actually to have left them.

"Well, now, dear dears," she had said with a little smile and a little
sigh, "we have been happy ... only a little way away...."

But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had
supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that she
and he would go on and on and on--well, till they grew very old
together.

Nothing could ever touch him....

"What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?" he had said when the man brought
round the half-broken filly that its owner "funked."

And she had laughed and said: "Yes, an angel in a temper--what a run
you will have, Dad!" and had waved from the gate as the angel in a
temper curveted away around the corner.

Nothing could ever touch him....

And then the man on a bicycle--with a dent in his hat, she noticed.

"If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he