Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/56

 Bill went about in a dazed way, hardly conscious of the life about him. He did the chores about the barn and chopped the wood mechanically from force of habit. When he was spoken to he did not hear. He looked haggard and grief-stricken.

"He feels bad, don't he, poor man," said Aunt Mary Blackford, looking out of the kitchen window at his stooping figure straggling aimlessly toward the barn.

"Yaas, he grieves some," admitted Aunt Abigail. "But he'll be a-lookin' araound fer another afore the year's out. That's haow men is."

The neighborhood for miles around came to the funeral. The hitched buggies filled the barnyard and were strung out for some distance along the side of the road. The women wore their black mourning clothes, with little white aprons tied about their waists. Some of the men had on their wedding suits. Some wore ill-fitting readymades bought from the mail order house after a good crop year. Others came in clean overalls and corduroy jackets lined with sheepskin. All were shaved, sleek-haired and serious-looking. When they had tied their horses, they gathered together in little knots in the barnyard talking in low tones, not about the dead, but about the price of hogs on the hoof, the long, hard winter that it had been this year, and the best way of preparing a tobacco bed. At a sign from the undertaker, they filed respectfully, with bared heads, into the little front room whither their womenfolk had preceded them.

The long coffin stood on a trestle in the middle of the room. It seemed tremendously large and imposing. The mouse-like little woman was claiming more attention now than she had ever done in all the forty-odd years of her drab existence. Bill sat at the head, staring straight before him. The children, with red eyes and dazed, frightened faces, sat along one side. Aunt Abigail and several other near relatives, with solemn faces and handkerchiefs in their hands, completed the circle about the bier. The other mourners stood or sat against the walls. Several of the women were crying. The three women