"I don't see what he expects to do with that little girl of his, without
any mother, that way," said Mrs. Gerrish. "He ought to get married."

"Perhaps he will, when he's waited a proper time," suggested Mrs. Putney
demurely.

"Well, his wife's been the same as dead ever since the child was born. I
don't know what you call a proper time, Ellen," argued Mrs. Gerrish.

"I presume a minister feels differently about such things," Mrs. Wilmington
remarked indolently.

"I don't see why a minister should feel any different from anybody else,"
said Mrs. Gerrish. "It's his duty to do it on his child's account. I don't
see why he don't have the remains brought to Hatboro', anyway."

They debated this point at some length, and they seemed to forget Annie.
She listened with more interest than her concern in the last resting-place
of the minister's dead wife really inspired. These old friends of hers
seemed to have lost the sensitiveness of their girlhood without having
gained tenderness in its place. They treated the affair with a nakedness
that shocked her. In the country and in small towns people come face
to face with life, especially women. It means marrying, child-bearing,
household cares and burdens, neighbourhood gossip, sickness, death, burial,
and whether the corpse appeared natural. But ever so much kindness goes
with their disillusion; they are blunted, but not embittered.

They ended by recalling Annie to mind, and Mrs. Putney said: "I suppose you
haven't been to the cemetery yet? I They've got it all fixed up since you