rest, my dear?' she whispered, kissing Rose
fondly. 'You had better go downstairs. I've had some tea, and I'll take
charge here now.'

'Very well,' the girl assented, yawning. 'Who's that just gone?'

'Mr. Twemlow.'

'Oh, mother!' Rose exclaimed in angry disappointment. 'Why didn't some
one tell me he was here?'

* * * * *

'The cortege will move at 2.15,' said the mourning invitation cards, and
on Saturday at two o'clock Uncle Meshach, dressed in deep black, sat on
a cane-chair against the wall in the bedroom of his late sister. He had
not been able to conceive Hannah's funeral without himself as chief
mourner, and therefore he had accomplished his own recovery in the
amazing period of fifty hours; and in addition to accomplishing his
recovery he had given an uninterrupted series of the most minute
commands concerning the arrangements for the obsequies. Protests had
been utterly useless. 'It will kill him,' said Leonora to the doctor as
Meshach, risen straight out of bed, was getting into a cab at Hillport
that morning to drive to Church Street. 'It may,' old Hawley answered.
'But what can one do?' Smiling, first at Meshach, and then at Leonora,
the doctor had joined his aged patient in the cab and they had gone off
together.

Next to the cane-chair was Hannah's mahogany bed, which had been
stripped. On the bed lay a massive oaken coffin, and, accurately fitted
into the coffin, lay the withered remains of Meshach's slave. The prim
and spotless bedroom, with its chest of drawers, its small glass, its
three-cornered wardrobe, its narrow washstand, its odd bonnet-boxes, its
trunk, its skirts hung inside-out behind the door, its Bible with the
spectacle-case on it, its texts, its miniature portraits, its samplers,
framed in maple, and its engraving of the infant John Wesley being saved
from the fire at Epworth Vicarage, framed in gold, was eloquent of the
habits of the woman who had used it, without ambition, without repining,
and without hope, save an everlasting hope, for more than fifty years.

Into this room, obedient to the rigid etiquette of an old-fashioned Five
Towns funeral, every person asked to the burial was bound to come, in
order to take a last look at the departed, and to offer a few words of
sympathy to the chief mourner. As they entered--Stanway, David Dain,
Fred Ryley, Dr. Hawley, Leonora, the servant, and lastly Arthur
Twemlow--unwillingly desecrating the almost sae