The Dolls Funeral 87

primroses thinkin’ to bloom in the hedge.
I’m glad that she do know, but I can’t
fancy the garden with her gone out of it.
What is more, I haven’ got the heart to
watch her funeral. Ill be gone out of
sight at once, I believe.”

He turned away, and the Visitor was
left solitary beside the little grave.

The child came at last. She was bare-
headed, and the grief in her face—though
it could last but an hour or two—was not
less real from the fact that she wore the
pretty frock and the big useful pinafore of
every-day life. She held the yellow card-
board box tightly to her breast, and the
Visitor, understanding that the ceremony
was very real to her, removed his hat and
waited.

‘Shall I be sexton too?” he said, pre-
sently ; and when she did not answer he
took the box from her arms. It seemed to
him that she would fain have resisted, but
she yielded in the end. He knelt and was
about to place the box in the hole which