ng most expensive. I did
not argue with him at all, for I knew be had the advantage of me. I am
not an expert in coffins, and, of course, could not meet him upon his
own ground. If it had been the purchase of a horse or gun or dog, or a
new typewriting machine, it would have been an altogether different
thing.

I simply told the undertaker to go ahead and make such a coffin as I had
ordered, regardless of expense. I wanted it softly cushioned, and I told
him not to make it unnecessarily wide. I wanted them side by side, with
their faces turned upward, of course, so that we could all have a fair
last look at them, but I wanted them so close together that they would
be touching from head to foot. I wanted it so that when they became dust
and bone all would be mingled, and that even the hair, which does not
decay for some centuries, which grows, you know, after death, would be
all twined together.

The undertaker followed my instructions, for undertakers get to be as
mechanical as shoemakers or ticket-sellers; but the relations of the
Parasangs and close friends at home thought it an odd thing to have
done. I overrode them and had things all my own way, for I knew I was
right. I knew the Parasangs better than any one else. I knew what they
would have me do were communications between us still possible.

There was something so odd about the love story of the Parasangs that it
always interested me. It made me laugh, but I was in full sympathy with
them, though sympathy was something of which they were not in need. The
queer thing about it was their age.

Mr. Parasang and I were cronies. We were cronies despite the number of
years which had elapsed since our respective births. He was
seventy-eight. Mrs. Parasang was seventy-five. And they had been married
but two years. I knew Mr. Parasang before the wedding, and it was
because of my close intimacy with him that I came to know the relations
between the two and the story of it. I was just forty years his junior.

I can't understand why the man died so easily. He was such a
vigorous-looking person for his age, and seemed in such perfect health.
He was one of your apparently strong, gray-mustached old men, and did
not look to be more than sixty-five at most. His wife, I think, was
really stronger than he, though she did not appear so young. It is often
that way with women. The attack of pneumonia which came upon Parasang
was not, the doctors told me, vicious enough to overt