When Katy returned, the feet of the bearers were at the door. With them Millerstown crowded in, weeping. Grandmother Gaumer had wept with them, Grandfather Gaumer had helped them in their troubles. Grandfather was laid in state in the best room and presently the house settled into quiet. In this house five generations had met grief with dignity and death with hope; thus they should be met once more.
Preparations were begun at once for the laying away of the body in the little graveyard of the church which the soul had loved. At the feet of his mother, beside his little sister, a grave was dug for William Gaumer and was lined with boughs of arbor vitæ and sprays of life everlasting.
In the Gaumer house there was little sweeping and cleaning; the beds were not made up for show, but were prepared for the gathering relatives. Grandfather Gaumer did not lie alone in the best room as John Hartman had lain; his children and his grandchildren went in and sat beside him and talked of him.
When the funeral was over and the house was in order and the relatives had gone, Katy sat on her little stool at her grandmother's knee and cried her fill. Grandmother Gaumer had not given way to grief. She had moved about among her kin, she had given directions, she had wept only a little.
To Katy there was not now a ray of brightness in the world.
"Nothing is certain," she mourned. "My gran'pop brought me up. I was always by him, he was my father. I cannot get along without him."
"You will feel certain again of this world, Katy," her grandmother assured her. "You must not mourn for grandfather. He had a long, long life. You would not have him back where he would get lame and helpless after while. That is worse, Katy."
"But there are many things I would like to say to him. I never told him enough how thankful I was to him."
"He knew you were thankful. Now you are to go to school. Everything is to be just as it was planned."
Nevertheless, her heart beat a little faster. There was, after all, something right in the world. Moreover, she still had another person to think of. That day Alvin Koehler's dark eyes had looked down upon her as she sat by her grandmother in church. She had promised to help Alvin; his eyes reminded her consciously or unconsciously of her promise.