April was two weeks old. Already Passion-week had come. Easter-time would soon begin. Crocuses dotted the short new grass on the lawn. Mated robins chose nesting places in the old orchard, and the big cherry tree had put on its crown of snow-tipped buds.

On that cheery spring morning—wheeled out for her daily airing—"The Lady" looked expectantly at the bulbs' circles, where the newly uncovered hyacinths and tulips—pushing vigorously up for the sun's warm kisses—already showed bud and leaf of pale tender green.

Dear patient Lady! Would that God had spared her to see another "Spring put on its bloom," but ere the day had done He called her to the

"Immortal gardens where angels are the wardens."

With scarce a pang, her tired old heart ceased beating.

It had been the fancy of this dear cousin of my husband to select me among her relatives as the superintendent of her funeral—to "lay her away," as she quaintly expressed it—and it had long been impressed upon me that I must "save myself" for that responsible trust. Often when I came over from Cambridge to share her mid-day meal, she looked compassionately at my tired face, as I arranged the big basket of flowers brought for her vases (among which she especially doted on the pansies, with their charming variety of color), and holding up a warning finger, said discouragedly: "Cousin, you over-work. Take more rest, or you will pass on before me, and then, who will lay me away?"

And so it was, that on Easter Sunday—not altogether without that "pomp and circumstance" which, from time immemorial, had attended the Mansion House funerals—I arranged her burial. With the sweet spring air coming in at the open sunny window—flowers perfuming and brightening the house and clasped loosely in her folded hands, and with so sweet a smile upon her lips that it half seemed a welcome to the neighbors and friends who looked their last upon her benignant face, still untouched by "the finger of decay"—I gave her grudgingly to the cold dark grave, where among her dear kindred (in a self-chosen site) we laid her—"ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

The simple head-stone appointed by herself marks the spot; it holds this tender legend, prepared by one who knew her:

"Her life was sweet with charity and patience."

I like to fancy her "homing shade" still, in the long summer afternoons, haunting the old garden of her love; watching, as of old, the flitting of butterflies, listening to the glad singing of birds, and marking upon the lawn the lovely shadows lengthen in the west'ring sun.

"Only the forgotten are dead."