There was really no particular use in living, so far as she could see.
Ella and Jim were very kind; but, after all, they were not Jed, and Jed
was away--hopelessly away. He did not even want to come back, so Ella
and Jim said.
There was the money, too. She did not like to think of the money. It
seemed to her that every nickel and dime and quarter that she had
painfully wrested from the cost of keeping soul and body together all
these past years lay now on her breast with a weight that crushed like
lead. She had meant that money for Jed. Ella and Jim were kind, of
course, and she was willing they should have it; yet Jed--but Jed was
away.
And she was so tired. She had ceased to rouse herself, either for the
medicine or for the watery broths they forced through her lips. It was
so hopelessly dragged out--this dying; yet it must be over soon. She had
heard them tell the neighbors only yesterday that she was unconscious
and that she did not know a thing of what was passing around her; and
she had smiled--but only in her mind. Her lips, she knew, had not moved.
They were talking now--Ella and Jim--out in the other room. Their
voices, even their words, were quite distinct, and dreamily,
indifferently, she listened.
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