Through the night her cry had been, "Ah, Terry, Terry,--ye gev me manny a haird blow, darlin', but ye kep' th' hairdest til th' last!" It was not possible to avoid being irritated a little by such a woman, but I always tried to conceal this from her.

I suppose she had a right to her own play-world.

She was dressed now in a limp black of many rusty ruffles that sagged close to her and glistened in spots through its rust.

Both the dress and the spiritless silk bonnet that circled her keen little face seemed to have been cried over a long time--to be always damp with her tears.
With parting injunctions to my namesake to let the cat alone, not to "track up" the kitchen, and not to play with matches, the little woman lovingly cuffed the conspiring lesser Sullivans into a decorous line behind her and marched them off to church.

There, I knew, she would give from her poor wage that the soul of dead Terry should be the sooner prayed out of a place, which, it would seem, might have been created with an eye single to his just needs.
Thinking of woman's love,--that, like the peace of God it passeth all understanding,--I officiated absently as one of two guests at a "tea-party." My fellow-guest was a large doll braced stiffly in its chair; a doll whose waxen face had been gouged by vandal nails.