very white against the blackness of
her gown. Hendrick did most of the talking, Chris listening
thoughtfully, accepting, rejecting, Norma a mere spectator. She decided
that Annie was playing her part with a stimulating consciousness of its
dignity, and that Chris was not much better. Honest, red-faced Hendrick
was only genuinely anxious to arrange these details without a scene.

"I take Annie up the aisle," Chris said, "you'll be a pall-bearer,
Hendrick. Mrs. Lee says that the Judge feels he is too old to serve, so
he will follow me, with Leslie. She gets here this afternoon. Then
Acton brings Norma, and that fills the family pew. Now, in the next
pew----"

It reminded Norma of something, she could not for a moment remember
what. Then it came to her. Of course!--Leslie's wedding. They had
discussed precedence and pews just that way. Music, too. Hendrick was
making a note of music--Alice's favourite dirge was to be played, and
"Come Ye Disconsolate" which had been sung at Theodore's funeral,
thirteen years ago, and at his father's, seven years before that, was to
be sung by the famous church choir.

The church was unfortunately small, so cards were to be given to the few
hundreds that it would accommodate. Hendrick suggested a larger church,
but Annie shut her eyes, leaning back, and faintly shaking her head.

"Please--Hendrick--_please_!" she articulated, wearily. "Mama loved that
church--and there's so little that we can do now--so little that she
ever wanted, dear old saint!"

It was not hypocrisy, Norma thought. Annie had been a good daughter.
Indeed she had been unusually loyal, as the daughters of Annie's set saw
their filial duties. But something in this overwhelming, becoming grief,
combined with so lively a sense of what was socially correct, jarred
unpleasantly on the younger woman. Of course, funerals had to have
management, like everything else. And it was only part of Annie's code
to believe that an awkwardness now, a social error ever so faint, an
opportunity given the world for amusement or criticism, would reflect
upon the family and upon the dead.

Norma carried on long mental conversations with Wolf, criticizing or
defending the Melroses. She imagined herself telling him of the shock it
had given her to realize that her grandmother's body was barely cold
before an autocratic and noisy French hairdresser had arrived, demanding
electric heat and hand-glasses as casually as if his customer had been