of all the unpleasantness of earth. And please help me to keep calm and sweet and bear everything gently as You would have me do.
She went down the stairs slowly, singing softly to herself the words of a little chorus that the soldier's words had brought to her mind, a song she had often sung in young people's gatherings.
"All through the night, all through the night
My Savior has been watching over me.
He saves me so sweetly, so fully and completely,
And washes in His own atoning blood;
My sins are all forgiven, I'm on my way to heaven,
I'm walking in the smile of God."
Hattie looked up from her work at the stove and smiled. "You-all feelin' better, Miss Dale?" she asked in her most motherly tone. "You look real rested. Now sit down and eat your breakfast. You ain't got no call to wait to see if them relatives come. They'll surely understand that people will be comin' and goin' and you couldn't wait around to be stylish."
Dale glanced at the clock. "Yes," she said thoughtfully. "I believe you're right. They'll probably like it better that way anyway. And then, you know, they may not come."
"I surely hopes they don't!" breathed Hattie, almost like a prayer, as she slammed out into the kitchen to bring in the coffee and toast, and Dale felt her soul echoing an Amen to that prayer.
But they came. All three of them. With an eye to Hattie's delectable cooking they remembered. It was a quarter to nine before they got there, and the table was all cleared off, except for the cloth. But when Hattie heard them say they hadn't eaten yet, she whisked the dishes on and remembered to keep a pleasant face as she had promised Dale she would do.
There was orange juice for them all, coffee, and toast in plenty.
"Is this all?" asked Powelton insolently. "We should've stayed at the hotel. If I had known—" But Hattie hurried out into the kitchen, thus moving the audience to further insolence.
Hattie returned presently with a platter of neatly fried eggs and set them down with finality. Powelton surveyed them unpleasantly and asked, "Haven't you got any bacon? I like bacon with my eggs."
But Hattie in a greatly controlled tone said quietly, "Not to-day, we ain't. We couldn't have the smell of bacon when there's folks coming and going."
"Nonsense!" said the boy in his imperious voice. "Go cook me some bacon."
Hattie looked at him calmly an instant, with close-shut lips, and then marched back to the kitchen, shutting the door definitely. She did not return, and Powelton finally finished the eggs and went out to the front porch to smoke endless cigarettes, growing more and more peeved at the idea of the funeral that was imminent and from which his mother had absolutely refused to let him absent himself.
"You know you have got to make as good an appearance as possible," his mother had said. "The will hasn't been read yet, and it may mean something to you if the lawyers are in your favor."
So the spoiled boy sulked on the front porch and smoked and watched the undertakers bring piles of folding chairs into the house. And when he went into the house to get a drink of water, he found them taking the leaves out of the dining room table, closing it up, and shoving it to the far corner of the room.
"Hey!" he said arrogantly, standing in the doorway. "You can't do that! We've gotta have lunch here before the funeral!"
The undertakers glanced at him curiously and looked to their own boss, who answered Powelton curtly. "Those were the orders, young man," he said and paid no further attention to him.
So the guests discovered—when Hattie called Aunt Blanche to the hurried meal—that lunch was to be served in the kitchen. A couple of small, neat tables covered with snowy napkins were set in the far end of the kitchen, with steaming bowls of soup for the three, cups of coffee, a pitcher of milk, plenty of bread and butter, and applesauce with a plate of sugary doughnuts. But Dale was nowhere to be seen.
"She's in the livin' room, fixin' the flowers," explained Hattie when questioned. "She said she couldn't come now."
Aunt Blanche stiffened and sat down in the neat chair after inspecting it to see if it was really clean.
"Well, if I'd known I was to be treated so informally," she signed, "I certainly shouldn't have come."
Hattie pursed her lips grimly together and refrained with effort from saying, "I wisht ye hadn't uv."
But they ate a good lunch, and not a crumb of the big plate of doughnuts remained, for Powelton and Corliss made a business of finishing them, meantime going outside to observe developments.
"Well," said Aunt Blanche arrogantly, as she rose from the kitchen chair, "that's the first time I was ever served a meal in the kitchen in any place where I was visiting."
But Hattie again made no reply, and very irately and a trifle uncertainly the guest withdrew.
They found when they entered the hall that the casket had been arranged in the living room opposite the door, and the sweet silver-crowned face was visible among the flowers.
Corliss gasped and, ducking her face down in her mother's neck, got ready one of her terrific screams. But her mother, well knowing the signs, put a quick hand over her mouth and uttered a grave order: "Shut right up! Do you hear? There are ladies coming in the front door. And there comes a sailor!"
It was that word sailor that stopped the scream in its first gasp. Corliss lifted her frightened, angry eyes and caught a glimpse of a uniform coming in the front door.
Wide-eyed, Corliss ducked behind her mother, slunk into the corner out of sight of the doorway, and shut her eyes. If she had to endure this torture, at least she would make it as bearable as possible. She wouldn't see any more than she had to see of the horror of death.
The people were stealing in quietly now, going into the living room for a solemn look at the face of the old friend who was lying there and then, with downcast eyes, sitting down in an unobtrusive seat. A few of them stepped across to the open dining room. It seemed to be quite a sizable gathering, mostly old ladies, a few uninteresting-looking men, thought Corliss, as she peeked out between the fringes of her lashes and observed Grandmother's friends contemptuously. The seats were almost full and the minister was arriving, according to a somber whisper of the woman who sat just in front. And then suddenly there came more people, hurrying in as if they knew they were late, filling up all the chairs in sight. Behind them came a good-looking young man in a gray business suit, who walked straight out of sight over to where the minister had gone, by the foot of the casket. Corliss wondered who he was and stretched her neck to try and see him, wishing she had taken a better seat while there was still room. But there wasn't a vacant chair in sight, and even if there were she couldn't get by, the chairs were crowded so closely.
Then, just at the last minute like that, came the officer, the same one who had been there the night before with the flowers that they had put in Grandmother's hands, they said. She hadn't seen them. She wouldn't go and look. Silly lilies of the valley, what you gave to a baby!
But the officer walked quietly in and one of the undertakers placed him in a chair in the doorway, where he could see into the living room and, best of all, where Corliss could watch him. She decided that this funeral wasn't going to be so stuffy after all and straightened up in her chair, opening
