Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/85

 used to have to run out of the dining room when there was company and she mustn't laugh. Joe, who was going to do so much, so soon. Joseph Montgomery Green, one of the Greens of Westlake. Joe, who had been Kate's and now was God's.

Kate kept wanting to consult him about everything, to tell him things, even funny things. All the hushed, solemn voices—if only Joe were there to speak in a natural voice and break the spell, so that she could speak back naturally.

She wanted him to know how people loved him; to show him the sheaf of lilies that must mean bread and cheese meals for weeks to come for the three Misses Mortimer; to show him the basket Mr. and Mrs. Driggs had sent to the city for, the golden basket full of mauve and froglike brown and green orchids, its great horseshoe of handle tied with palms and yards and yards of glossy mauve ribbon. She wanted him to read the wonderful letters his old friends wrote about him.

She wanted him, desperately, to comfort her.

For tiny breathing spaces, in the shallows, she knew that everyone thought she was being "wonderful." She was proud for Joe that St. Stephen's had never been so full for a funeral; she took an interest in the becomingness of her widow's bonnet.

"Kate"—Carrie's solemn face, red-eyed, red-nosed, looked into the room where she was lying on the bed