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At five o'clock Lisbeth cae key in her hand: it was the key of the chahout the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing grief, she had been in incessantthe initial duties to her dead with the awe and exactitude that belong to religious rites She had brought out her little store of bleached linen, which she had for long years kept in reserve for this supreme use It seeo, when she had told Thias where this linen lay, that he ht be sure and reach it out for her when SHE died, for she was the elder of the two Then there had been the work of cleansing to the strictest purity every object in the sacred cha from it every trace of common daily occupation The small hich had hitherto freely let in the frostyman's slumber, must now be darkened with a fair white sheet, for this was the sleep which is as sacred under the bare rafters as in ceiled houses Lisbeth had even lected and unnoticeable rent in the checkered bit of bed-curtain; for the moments were few and precious nohich she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the sed peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious Decent burial hat Lisbeth had been thinking of for herself through years of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should knohen she was being carried to the churchyard, followed by her husband and her sons; and now she felt as if the greatest work of her life were to be done in seeing that Thias was buried decently before her--under the white thorn, where once, in a dreaht she lay in the coffin, yet all the while saw the sunshine above and smelt the white blossoms that were so thick upon the thorn the Sunday she went to be churched after Ada that could be done to-day in the chamber of death--had done it all herself, with so, for she would let no one be fetched to help her froenerally; and her favourite Dolly, the old housekeeper at Mr Burge's, who had co as soon as she heard of Thias's death, was too dihted to be of much use She had locked the door, and now held the key in her hand, as she threw herself wearily into a chair that stood out of its place in the middle of the house floor, where in ordinary times she would never have consented to sit The kitchen had had none of her attention that day; it was soiled with the tread of muddy shoes and untidy with clothes and other objects out of place But what at another time would have been intolerable to Lisbeth's habits of order and cleanliness sees should look strange and disordered and wretched, now the old ht not to look as if nothing had happened Adaitations and exertions of the day after his night of hard work, had fallen asleep on a bench in the workshop; and Seth was in the back kitchen et the kettle to boil, and persuade his ence which she rarely allowed herself