y.

All at once she had a waked-up feeling; she sat bolt upright in bed
and thought, "Comp'ny." There were voices coming across the passageway
from the parlor. A light streamed, too; and when she stood faintly
bathed in its glow, she saw that Mrs. Preston was there--Mrs. Preston,
in the deep mourning she had vowed never to put off as long as her
beloved State lay with her head in the dust. But something in her lap
brightened it now, this shabby, soldier-widow black: a slim cross,
divine with green and white, as daintily delicate, with its tremulous
myrtle stars, as had been the lady things in Miss Sally and Miss Polly
Graham's store.

Mrs. Preston was saying that she was going to send it "anonymously."
Then she asked Ma if she knew that _he_ had had to attend to all the
arrangements himself. "Even the dress," went on Mrs. Preston, crying a
little; and Uncle John coughed in the deep, growly way gentlemen
always cough when they are ashamed to cry themselves.

Then they all began talking about funerals, saying to each other they
would like to go, but how _could_ they? Uncle John saying at last,
with more of the growly, coughy way, that no, no, they "couldn't flout
him."

It would be more cruel, far, far more cruel, said Uncle John, than to
stay away. Besides,--didn't the ladies know?--it was private.
"Though," the speaker went on, his worn, somber face lighting up with
something like a gleam of comfort, "I reckon that was to keep those
other white hounds away as well as the rest of us."

Ma nodded. They weren't gentlemen-born, as he was, she sighed--"born
to Southern best." And then, with a "Poor wretch--poor, proud,
degraded wretch!" she handed out the thing she had been making--a
white rosette as beautiful as any rose--and told Mrs. Preston to put
it "there," touching the myrtle cross with fingers kissing-soft.

But Mrs. Preston only said back, "He's refused even the minister!" and
seemed more unhappy, oh, mighty unhappy.

Hope Carolina gasped with the wonderment of it all. How funny it
seemed, how dreadfully funny, that everybody had forgotten everything
just because a child had gone up into the sky: Uncle John the bullet,
and Mrs. Preston the lost paradise next door, and Ma the barbecue
speeches that made niggers vote any which way--all, all that Radicals
had ever done to them!

After a while one of the voices spoke again--whose, Hope Carolina
could never tell:

"_Think, there won't be a white face there!_"