THE STALL IN THE BUTTER-MARKET.
The Senior Tutor took all the trouble of the funeral—or the funerals, rather—off the Master's nieces. He came over directly he heard that the Master was dead, and arranged everything. He knew his last wishes, expressed long ago when he was in health and the end seemed a long way off.
His wishes had been so clearly expressed that there could be no doubt about them. He had provided for every contingency. He was to lie beside his wife. If she preceded him, he was to be laid by her side wherever she was laid. If he should happen to die before her, he was to be carried back to the old place, to the old churchyard where all his humble forefathers lay, to go back to where he had started, and find his last resting-place where his life had begun. In no case was he to be buried in the college chapel. They might put up a brass for him on the old walls, among the carven tombs and tablets of the old Masters and Fellows, but the dust of his bones should not mix with theirs.
The Senior Tutor carried out his wishes faithfully. He arranged everything. There was nothing for the Master's nieces to do but to see to their own humble mourning. He came over directly he heard of the Master's death, and he was coming backwards and forwards to the lodge all the day. He wanted to get a sight of Lucy; he only wanted to see her for a few minutes; he would have preferred to see her alone. He had arranged exactly what he should say, and the time had come for saying it.
Whatever it was he had to say he had to put it off, for Lucy did not make her appearance all through that sad day.
She was so nervous and overwrought when all was over that Nurse Brannan had to put her to bed; and when she came in in the night, finding that the girl was awake and weeping, she came into her bed and lay down beside her.
Lucy could not go to sleep until she had poured out all her trouble into her sympathetic ear. She wouldn't have told Cousin Mary for the world.
Perhaps Nurse Brannan knew all about it without being told. She knew more about Lucy's lover than Lucy herself knew.
'Do you think I could do otherwise?' Lucy asked, weeping, when she had told her all her sad little story.