But that was long ago, almost at the beginning of things for
the girl.
There had been other funerals, the little brother who had been drowned
while playing in a forbidden stream, and the older brother who had gone
off in search of gold or his own way, and had crawled back parched with
fever to die in his mother's arms. But those, too, seemed long ago to the
girl as she stood in the empty cabin and looked fearfully about her. They
seemed almost blotted out by the last three that had crowded so close
within the year. The father, who even at his worst had a kind word for her
and her mother, had been brought home mortally hurt--an encounter with
wild cattle, a fall from his horse in a treacherous place--and had never
roused to consciousness again.
At all these funerals there had been a solemn service, conducted by a
travelling preacher when one happened to be within reach, and, when there
was none, by the trembling, determined, untaught lips of the white-faced
mother. The mother had always insisted upon it, especially upon a prayer.
It had seemed like a charm to help the departed one into some kind of a
pitiful heaven.
And when, a few months after the father, the mother had drooped and grown
whiter and whiter, till one day she clutched at her heart and lay down
gasping, and said: "Good-by, Bess! Mother's good girl! Don't forget!" and
was gone from her life of burden and disappointment forever, the girl had
prepared the funeral with the assistance of the one brother left.
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