I would have none touch my dead save myself and her favourite sister, who was with us at the last.

Cold and dry-eyed I remained, even when they hid her from me with the coffin-lid, even all the dreary way to Kensal Green where her husband and her baby-son were sleeping, and when we left her alone in the chill earth, damp with the rains of spring.

I could not believe that our day-dream was dead and buried, and the home in ruins ere yet it was fairly built.

Truly, my "house was left unto me desolate," and the rooms, filled with sunshine but unlighted by her presence, seemed to echo from their bare walls, "You are all alone." But my little daughter was there, and her sweet face and dancing feet broke the solitude, while her imperious claims for love and tendance forced me into attention to the daily needs of life.

And life was hard in those days of spring and summer, resources small, and work difficult to find.