"It happens to women, too, does it not, mother?" said Dahlia.

"They're most subject to trances, my sweet. From always imitatin' they
imitates their deaths at last; and, oh!" Mrs. Sumfit was taken with
nervous chokings of alarm at the thought. "Alone--all dark! and hard
wood upon your chest, your elbows, your nose, your toes, and you under
heaps o' gravel! Not a breath for you, though you snap and catch for
one--worse than a fish on land."

"It's over very soon, mother," said Dahlia.

"The coldness of you young women! Yes; but it's the time--you feeling,
trying for air; it's the horrid 'Oh, dear me!' You set your mind on it!"

"I do," said Dahlia. "You see coffin-nails instead of stars. You'd give
the world to turn upon one side. You can't think. You can only hate
those who put you there. You see them taking tea, saying prayers,
sleeping in bed, putting on bonnets, walking to church, kneading dough,
eating--all at once, like the firing of a gun. They're in one world;
you're in another."

"Why, my goodness, one'd say she'd gone through it herself," ejaculated
Mrs. Sumfit, terrified.

Dahlia sent her eyes at Rhoda.

"I must go and see that poor man covered." Mrs. Sumfit succumbed to a
fit of resolution much under the pretence that it had long been forming.