Ann Eliza turned her eyes from the sign as she went out and
locked the door behind her. Evelina's funeral had been very
expensive, and Ann Eliza, having sold her stock-in-trade and the
few articles of furniture that remained to her, was leaving the
shop for the last time. She had not been able to buy any mourning,
but Miss Mellins had sewed some crape on her old black mantle and
bonnet, and having no gloves she slipped her bare hands under the
folds of the mantle.

It was a beautiful morning, and the air was full of a warm
sunshine that had coaxed open nearly every window in the street,
and summoned to the window-sills the sickly plants nurtured indoors
in winter. Ann Eliza's way lay westward, toward Broadway; but at
the corner she paused and looked back down the familiar length of
the street. Her eyes rested a moment on the blotched "Bunner
Sisters" above the empty window of the shop; then they travelled on
to the overflowing foliage of the Square, above which was
the church tower with the dial that had marked the hours for the
sisters before Ann Eliza had bought the nickel clock. She looked
at it all as though it had been the scene of some unknown life, of
which the vague report had reached her: she felt for herself the
only remote pity that busy people accord to the misfortunes which
come to them by hearsay.

She walked to Broadway and down to the office of the house-
agent to whom she had entrusted the sub-letting of the shop. She
left the key with one of his clerks, who took it from her as if it
had been any one of a thousand others, and remarked that the
weather looked as if spring was really coming; then she turned and