Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/98

 were seated in a half-circle on the ground, except a few of the older ones for whom chairs had been placed. Chief among these was the former wife, an enormously fat squaw in a bright green skirt and red shawl. Her brown hands were crossed complacently on her stomach, and there was about her an air of stoical triumph. Two elderly Indians in check shirts and black trousers sat on either side of her. Near by, wearing a clean white apron over her torn skirt, sat Solomon's present wife. She wiped her face continually with a red and white handkerchief and gazed with sorrowful eyes at the floral Gates Ajar that Mrs. Chard had placed upon the coffin. Around her were grouped her family—the little girls and idiot boy at her feet, her daughters and their husbands holding moon-faced babies behind her. A little aloof stood Fawnie and her nineteen-year-old brother Charles, the young fellow dapper in city clothes with a straw sailor, a bow tie, and polished shoes with broad ribbon laces. Bobby, the boy whom Derek had first seen bathing with his sisters, had refused to join the mourners and had mounted a large swing beneath an elm tree, and there swung lazily to and fro, his handsome, inscrutable face turned towards the officiating minister.

"I like the boy in the swing," whispered Grace Jerrold to Derek. "He strikes a really barbaric note."

"To me," said Derek, "the minister is the one barbaric thing present."

He was a lank man with a damp black lock pendant over his forehead. He wore a black frock coat, a turn-down collar, and striped trousers. On a small table before him lay his autoharp; he held a Bible in one hand, while the index finger of the other stabbed dramatically at its open pages as he spoke. Behind him were ranged the Chard family, large-bosomed Mrs. Chard in respectable black, grasping a tow-headed child in either hand. With them