I'm off to Piping Tree for Dr.
Fairley."
But two hours later, when he returned, with the physician on horseback
at his side, Mr. Mullen's driving, like most earnest yet ignorant
endeavours, had already resulted in disaster. All night they worked
over Judy, who continued to stare through them, as though they were but
shadows which prevented her from seeing the object for which she was
looking. Then at sunrise, having brought a still-born child into the
world, she turned her face to the wall and passed out of it in search of
the adventure that she had missed.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT LIFE TEACHES
Judy was laid away amid the low green ridges in the churchyard, where
the drowsy hum of the threshing in a wheatfield across the road, was the
only reminder of the serious business of life. And immediately, as
if the beneficent green had enveloped her memory, her weaknesses were
effaced and her virtues were exalted in the minds of the living. Their
judgment was softened by a vague feeling of awe, but they were not
troubled, while they stood in a solemn and curious row around her grave,
by any sense of the pathetic futility of individual suffering in the
midst of a universe that creates and destroys in swarms.
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