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knees, moaning.
    His words became incoherent. The doctor touched his shoulder. “Please, Mr. Blair,” he said.
    The husband rose, and stood, sagged in the middle. “I guess I better go tell ‘em I won’t be to work tonight,” he looked helplessly about the room.
    “You run and telephone them, Leora,” suggested the doctor.
    The father stepped to her, and, without saying a word, put his grease-stained hand on her heavy brown hair, “Thankee, Leora, thankee.”
    She went lightly down the stairs, while her father, seeing his hat, stooped to pick it up. Rising, he turned to the doctor and asked, “Whatever made it happen?”
    The doctor did not answer.
    “We was happy here. I just got a ten-dollar raise.”
    “Was anything on her mind?” asked the doctor. “Nothin’ that I know of,” answered the husband.
    “Well,” said the doctor consolingly, taking his arm, “women at her time of life become sensitive.”
    “You must be right, Doctor.”
    Leora returned, followed by the undertaker, the other children, and two neighbor women.
    “We had better go down stairs,” said Dr. Farway.
    The undertaker and the neighbor women remained.
    Soon one of the neighbor women came down stairs and took charge of the home.
    A boat went down the river. The water from the paddle-wheel still shone in the sinking sun.
    “We can do no more now,” said the doctor, “You’d better come with me.”
    “I’m going to order some flowers,” she said to Sally. They passed a flower shop, where she ordered several groups of flowers.
    When the doctor told the woman to send him the bill, Leora said, “No—it’s my mother.”
    The woman, as if anxious to oblige at such a time, said to the doctor, “I’ll send a lovely bunch of lilies-of-the-valley in your name.”
    “Do, do,” said the doctor.
    “Let’s ride along the river,” suggested the girl.
    The leaves of the trees had turned to various colors, and stretched, a miles-long carpet, around a bend in the river, behind which the sun had set.
    Night came swiftly. The air was soon filled with sparks from fireflies.
    “I wonder where the lightning-bugs go in the winter?”
    The doctor, roused from reverie, looked at the girl. She had never seemed so beautiful to him. Stopping an impulse to put his arm about her, he said, “They all die, I suppose.”
    The girl shuddered, “I hate death.” She shook her head quickly. Her hair streamed across her face, “I’d be afraid to die.”
    “Why—,” said the doctor, “you’re not afraid to go to sleep—and when you do that you wake up to the same old thing. When you die you might wake up to something different.”
    “I’d rather wake up to the same old thing,” returned Leora.
    “It’s all in the way we’re trained,” said the doctor. After lighting a cigarette, he resumed, “There are people in the world who laugh at a death and cry at a birth. I was reading about them the other day.”
    The girl thought for a moment. “Maybe they’re right,” she said. Her voice became animated, “Tell me—what did my mother get out of life—one kid after another. Her skirts were always lopsided because of babies pulling at them.”
    “She fulfilled her purpose in the world,” said the doctor, “to bring others into it like herself.”
    “Well—all I can say is—it’s a hell of a purpose—she lived and died like a cow.”
    “Well, that’s all right,” returned the doctor, “nature’s no more interested in her than if she were a cow.”
    “What’s all this claptrap they teach you in church about then?” she asked.
    “You called it—just that—it’s too easy to believe—don’t you think?” He looked at Leora.
    “I don’t care about it either way, and I seldom give it a thought, except that I don’t want to die.”
    “That’s nothing new,” returned the doctor, “Nobody wants to die.”
    “My mother did,” said Leora.

Chapter 6
    Red Moll had taken charge of the house when Leora returned. Within a few