You've got to keep your mind on those things, Peter." "Yes, Ellen." The front room had been well rid up after the funeral and everybody at Ellen's earnest entreaty had left them quite alone.

Although there was fire in the base burner, they were sitting together by the kitchen stove, the front of which was thrown open for the sake of the warm glow of the coals.

By and by the kettle began to sing and the bare tips of the lilac scratched on the pane like a live thing waiting to be let in.
The little familiar sounds refilled for them the empty room.
Outside it was every way such a day as a well-spent life might slip away in; the tracks in the deep-rutted February snow might have been worn there by the habit of sixty years.

There was no hint of the spring yet, but here and there in the bare patches on the hills and the frayed icy edges of the drifts, the sign that the weight of the winter was behind them.

There would be a little quiet time yet and then the resurrection.