"Why, father," he stammered, "you don't think--you
know, it's all for _her_--and they say she can't live anyway. I had
never thought of such a thing before. I was wondering how I could
make it comfortable for Evelina here."
But his father did not seem to listen. "Countin' on that!" he
repeated. "Countin' on a poor old soul, that 'ain't ever had anything
to set her heart on but a few posies, dyin' to make room for other
folks to have what she's been cheated out on. Countin' on that!" The
old man's voice broke into a hoarse sob; he got up, and went
hurriedly out of the room.
"Why, father!" his son called after him, in alarm. He got up to
follow him, but his father waved him back and shut the door hard.
"Father must be getting childish," Thomas thought, wonderingly. He
did not bring up the subject to him again.
Evelina Adams died in March. One morning the bell tolled seventy long
melancholy tones before people had eaten their breakfasts. They ran
to their doors and counted. "It's her," they said, nodding, when they
had waited a little after the seventieth stroke. Directly Mrs. Martha
Loomis and her two girls were seen hustling importantly down the
road, with their shawls over their heads, to the Squire's house.
"Mis' Loomis can lay her out," they said. "It ain't likely that young
Evelina knows anything about such things.
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