In the furthest corner of the little churchyard they laid her, in a corner where the sun rested, and where a hawthorn grew, in which a robin sang hopefully while they laid her to rest.
Huldah, standing by the grave-side while the beautiful words of the Burial Service were being read, thought of those other partings, so sad, so cruel,--oh, this was better than those, and not so complete.
She could still feel that Aunt Emma was near her, and safe, and in the best of all keeping, at peace for ever and ever.
They thought it best that Huldah should not go back to the empty rooms again, and she was glad; so after the service was over she walked back to her old home once again, as though she had never left it, and the last few months had been but a dream.

And it was all so like a dream that at the top of the lane she paused and looked about her, half bewildered.

Could she be, she asked herself, the same Huldah who not so many months before had stood there a cowed, frightened, hunted thing, starving, exhausted, but minding nothing as long as--as what?
As long as she escaped from the two she had so lately parted with, with such an aching heart.

She looked down over her black frock.
She felt the sadness in her heart, the sense of loss.

Could such changes really have come about, that now she was full of grief that she could never again see or hear the aunt she had so feared?
"Come home, dear; come home.