She had not come down from London to do this--but away from the world--in the clean, still little cottage room which seemed to hold only grief and silence and death the wave rose and broke and swept her with it.
Mrs.Bennett only gave herself up to the small clutching hands and sat and shivered.
"No one--will come in--will they ?" Robin was gasping.

"There is no one to hear, is there ?" "No one on earth," said the old fairy woman.

"Quiet and loneliness are left if there's naught else." What she thought it would be hard to say.

The blow which had come to her at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might have been felled in Mersham Wood.

As the tree might have lain for a short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she seemed living.