Roxy's quilt had been removed from the coffin and draped over a near-by stand. Six bronzed, heavy-breathing, embarrassed looking men were marshalled in by the widow, and instructed how to lift the black-painted pine box, carry it to the waiting buckboard, and place it safely there with one end wedged under the seat. Then Roxy turned to Flenton.
"Go git Ellen and Jane," she prompted.
He hastened to the house and up stairs, and soon returned with a sister on each arm, black-draped and wailing, clinging to him. He helped them into their seats in his own vehicle. But when Ellen made room for him, he drew back and motioned Kimbro Cleaverage forward.
"Couldn't you drive, Mr. Cleaverage?" he said in an undertone. "Sylvane can take yo' team, with Miz. Griever and the chillen; and I've got to go in—" he reddened with embarrassment—"in another place."
The crowd was pretty much all in the yard now, clambering into 42 ox-carts and board-seated wagons. Roxy Griever, with Mary Ann Martha and Sylvane, were waiting in Kimbro Cleaverage's small wagon drawn by an old mule, while half-a-dozen undesired additions were offered to their party. Callista looked about her vainly for Lance. She had already defended herself two or three times from being thrust into some vehicle and carried away from the possibility of riding with him, when she finally saw him approaching down the road. He was on one black horse and leading another. She could not know that he had been over to Derf 's that morning to get the filly.
"Callista," said Flenton Hands's voice at her shoulder, "Little Liza sent me down to see would you come up to her right quick. She's mighty bad off."
With one last, furtive glance toward the black horse and his rider, Callista turned and hurried up to Liza.
"Air they gittin' off," inquired the ailing woman, eagerly lifting her head with its camphor-drenched cloths. "Did Ellen and Jane cry much? Looks to me like they wasn't much takin' on—I never heared much. There wasn't nigh the fuss that they was at old Enoch Dease's buryin'. I wish't to the land I could have been down there—the Lord knows I'd 'a' cried. Granny ought to be wept for. Think o' livin' to be ninety years old—and then 43 havin' to die at last! Oh, ain't it awful, Callista? How did she look, honey? Was Vander Blackshears here? Set right down there on my bed and tell me."
One might almost have guessed that the lengthened inquiries were dictated by someone who wanted Callista detained. The girl answered them hastily, with her heart galloping, her ears alert for sounds from below.
"Don't you be uneasy," Little Liza soothed her. "Flenton said he'd wait and take you in his new buggy that he bought when he got the coffin a-yesterday. You'll be the first one to ride in it—ain't that fine? Flent's jest that-a-way. He don't grudge anything to them he loves. You hadn't promised somebody else to ride with 'em, had ye, Callisty?"