She was pale and trembling, but she clasped his hand more firmly as the coffin went down, and gave no sob.

Fred and Sophy, though they were only two and three years younger, and though they had seen mamma in her coffin, seemed to themselves to be looking at some strange show.

They had not learned to decipher that terrible handwriting of human destiny, illness and death.
Dickey had rebelled against his black clothes, until he was told that it would be naughty to mamma not to put them on, when he at once submitted; and now, though he had heard Nanny say that mamma was in heaven, he had a vague notion that she would come home again tomorrow, and say he had been a good boy and let him empty her work-box.

He stood close to his father, with great rosy cheeks, and wide open blue eyes, looking first up at Mr.
Cleves and then down at the coffin, and thinking he and Chubby would play at that when they got home.
The burial was over, and Amos turned with his children to re-enter the house--the house where, an hour ago, Milly's dear body lay, where the windows were half darkened, and sorrow seemed to have a hallowed precinct for itself, shut out from the world.

But now she was gone; the broad snow-reflected daylight was in all the rooms; the Vicarage again seemed part of the common working-day world, and Amos, for the first time, felt that he was alone--that day after day, month after month, year after year, would have to be lived through without Milly's love.