that grew about the
schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the spring made it grow so much
the better, like some folks that had it hard in their youth, and were
bound to make the most of themselves before they died.

IV. At the Schoolhouse Window

ONE DAY I reached the schoolhouse very late, owing to attendance upon
the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad decline in
health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the doctor and
Mrs. Todd had tried in vain to ease. The services had taken place at
one o'clock, and now, at quarter past two, I stood at the schoolhouse
window, looking down at the procession as it went along the lower road
close to the shore. It was a walking funeral, and even at that distance
I could recognize most of the mourners as they went their solemn way.
Mrs. Begg had been very much respected, and there was a large company
of friends following to her grave. She had been brought up on one of
the neighboring farms, and each of the few times that I had seen her
she professed great dissatisfaction with town life. The people lived
too close together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not
get used to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament
three seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian
curiosities, specimens of conch shells and fine coral which they had
brought home from their voyages in lumber-laden ships. Mrs. Todd had
told me all our neighbor's history. They had been girls together, and,
to use her own phrase, had "both seen trouble till they knew the best
and worst on 't." I could see the sorrowful, large figure of Mrs. Todd
as I stood at the window. She made a break in the procession by walking
slowly and keeping the after-part of it back. She held a handkerchief
to her eyes, and I knew, with a pang of sympathy, that hers was not
affected grief.

Beside her, after much difficulty, I recognized the one strange and
unrelated person in all the company, an old man who had always been
mysterious to me. I could see his thin, bending figure. He wore a
narrow, long-tailed coat and walked with a stick, and had the same "cant
to leeward" as the wind-bent trees on the height above.

This was Captain Littlepage, whom I had seen only once or twice before,
sitting pale and old behind a closed window; never out of doors until
now. Mrs. Todd always shook her head gravely when I asked a question,
and said that he wasn't what he had b