steps. The service was long
but very beautiful, with giant candles burning by the draped bier,
organ music that seemed to swell and rumble in the pit of one's
stomach, and light voices of singing boys that made one vibrate as if
one had been turned into glass--all stirring one to a quite
meaningless regret, not for the man who lay deaf and dumb and blind
beneath the velvet pall, but because of vague thoughts about children
who die young and have wings to hover over those they loved down here
below. And, oh, the increasing heat of the church, the oppressive
crush, the heavy odors of flowers and crape and perspiration! When at
last one emerged, and the open air touched one's forehead, it was like
coming out of an oven into a cold bath.

Then the remains were consigned to the family vault in the small
graveyard behind the church--the crowd filling every vista, the bells
tolling, and the soldiers discharging a cannon and making one jump at
each regularly timed discharge. Mavis, turning her eyes in all
directions, looked at everything with intense interest--at the
gentlefolk, now inextricably mixed up with the tenantry and the mob;
at her husband, standing so black and solemn, with a face that might
have belonged to a marble statue; at the puff of smoke that crept
upward when the gun went bang, at the sunlight on the church tower, at
the birds flying so high and so joyous above its battlements. And all
at once she saw Aunt Petherick--the blackest mourner there, with crape
veils trailing to the ground, a red face down which the tears streamed
in rivers; sobbing so that the sobs sounded like the most violent
hiccoughs; really almost as much noise as the soldiers' gun.

Will had seen her too. Mavis noticed his stony glance at Auntie, when
the crowd began to move again.

While he was slowly making his way toward the stables, she got hold of
Mrs. Petherick and had a little chat with her. Auntie had now entirely
recovered from her recent hysterical storm; the redness of her face
was passing off, and its expression was one of anxiety, rather than of
grief.

"My dear girl," she said, "I don't yet know what this will mean to me.
You know, he promised the house for my life--but he wouldn't give me a
lease. I've nothing to show--not so much as a letter. I may be turned
out neck and crop."

"Oh, Auntie, I should think his wishes would be respected."

"How'm I to prove his wishes?" said Mrs. Petherick, quite testily.
"It'll be w