ne, one
of those high-speed suburban roads which, all over the country, are
doing so much to persuade city people back to the land. The cars are
steam-road size. Two of them had been provided for the mourners, and
there was no room to spare; for the Paynter family connection was large,
and it seemed that little Fifi had many friends.

From Stop 11, where the little station is, your course is by the
woodland path; past the little springhouse, over the tiny rustic bridge,
and so on up the shady slope to the cluster of ancient pines. In the
grove stood carriages; buggy horses reined to the tall trees; even that
abomination around a church, the motor of the vandals. In the walk
through the woods, Queed found himself side by side with a fat,
scarlet-faced man, who wore a vest with brass buttons and immediately
began talking to him like a lifelong friend. He was a motorman on the
suburban line, it seemed, and had known Fifi very well.

"No, sir, I wouldn't believe it when my wife seen it in the paper and
called it out to me, an' I says there's some mistake, you can be sure,
and she says no, here it is in the paper, you can read it for y'self.
But I wouldn't believe it till I went by the house on the way to my run,
and there was the crape on the door. An' I tell you, suh, I couldn't a
felt worse if 'twas one o' my own kids. Why, it seems like only the
other morning she skipped onto my car, laughin' and sayin', 'How are you
to-day, Mr. Barnes?' Why she and me been buddies for nigh three years,
and she took my 9.30 north car every Sunday morning, rain or shine, just
as reg'lar, and was the only one I ever let stand out on _my_ platform,
bein' strictly agin all rules, and my old partner Hornheim was fired for
allowin' it, it ain't six months since. But what could I do when she
asked me, _please, Mr. Barnes_, with that sweet face o' hers, and her
rememberin' me every Christmas that came along just like I was her
Pa...."

The motorman talked too much, but he proved useful in finding seats up
near the front, where, being fat, he took up considerably more than his
share of room.

Unless Tim had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty years ago, it was
the first time that Queed had ever been inside a church. He had read
Renan at fourteen, finally discarding all religious beliefs in the same
year. Approximately Spencer's First Cause satisfied his reason, though
he meant to buttress Spencer's contention in its weakest place and carr