Then old man Sikora, who wasn't so old (but poverty and hard work with a
pick give a man an aged look), was taken to the county hospital. The
Sikora children continued to dodge wagons and trucks and Mrs. Sikora went
out three days a week to do washing. And the milkman and the grocer came
around regularly and explained to Mrs. Sikora that they, too, had to live
and she must pay her bills.

Then the neighbors said: "Did you hear about it? Old man Sikora died last
night in the hospital. What will poor Mrs. Sikora do now? They ain't got a
thing."

And old man Sikora was brought home because his widow insisted upon it.
The neighbors came in and looked at the body and wept with Mrs. Sikora,
and the children sat around after school and looked uncomfortably at the
walls. And some one asked: "How you going to bury him, Mrs. Sikora?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Sikora, "I'm going to have a good funeral."

* * * * *

There was an insurance policy for $500. The Sikoras had kept it up,
scraping together the $10 premiums when the time came. Mrs. Sikora took
the policy to the husband of a woman whose washing she had done. The
husband was in the real estate business.

"I need money to bury my man," she said. "He died last night in the
hospital."

She was red-eyed and dressed in black and the real estate man said: "What