some folks seem to think! Used to be
scandalized if a-body took anythin' but a white flower to a funeral. Now
they tell me that when Jedge Stilton's youngest girl come from New York
to her pa's buryin' she fetched about a wash tub of blood-red roses.
Put them all over him, too! Said he loved red roses livin' and so he
was goin' to have them when he passed over. Now if they are lettin' up a
little on white on earth, mebby some of the stylish ones will carry the
fashion over yander. If Heaven is like this, I won't spend none of my
time frettin' about the foundations. I'll jest forget there is any, even
if we do always have to be so perticler to get them solid on earth. Talk
of gold harps! Can't you almost hear them? And listen to the birds and
that water! Say, you won't get lonesome here, will you?"

"Indeed no!" answered the Girl. "Wouldn't you like to lie on my
beautiful couch that the Harvester made with his own hands, and I'll
spread Mother Langston's coverlet over you and let you look at all my
pretty things while I slip away a few minutes to something I'd like to
do?"

"I'd love to!" said the old woman. "I never had a chance at such fine
things. David told me he was makin' your room all himself, and that he
was goin' to fill it chuck full of everythin' a girl ever used, and
I see he done it right an' proper. Away last March he told me he was
buildin' for you, an' I hankered so to have a woman here again, even
though I never s'posed she'd be sochiable like you, that I egged him
on jest all I could. I never would 'a' s'posed the boy could marry like
this----all by himself."

The Girl went to the ice chest to bring some of the fruit juice, chilled
berries, and to the pantry for bread and wafers to make a dainty little
lunch that she placed on the veranda table; and then she and Granny
Moreland talked, until the visitor said that she must go. The Girl went
with her to the little bridge crossing Singing Water on the north. There
the old lady took her hand.

"Honey," she said, "I'm goin' to tell you somethin'. I am so happy I can
purt near fly. Last night I was comin' down the pike over there chasin'
home a contrary old gander of mine, and I looked over on your land and
I see David settin' on a log with his head between his hands a lookin'
like grim death, if I ever see it. My heart plum stopped. Says I, 'she's
a failure! She's a bustin' the boy's heart! I'll go straight over and
tell her so.' I didn't dare bespeak h