According to her wishes, Aunt Rebecca was robed in white for burial. The cashmere dress was fashioned, of course, after the garb she had worn so many years, and was complete with apron, pointed cape, all in white. Her hair was parted and folded under a white cap as it had been in her lifetime. She looked peaceful and happy as she lay in the parlor of her little home in Landisville. A smile seemed to have fixed itself about her lips as though the pleasant thoughts her will had occasioned lingered with her to the very last.
She had stipulated that short services be held at the house, then the body taken to the church and a public service held and after interment in the old Mennonite graveyard at Landisville, a public dinner to be served in the basement of the meeting-house, as is frequently the custom in that community.
The service of the burial of the dead is considered by the plain sects as a sacred obligation to attend whenever possible. Relatives, friends, and members of the deceased’s religious sect, drive many miles to pay their last respects to departed ones. The innate hospitality of the Pennsylvania Dutch calls for the serving of a light lunch after the funeral. Relatives, friends, who have come from a distance or live close by, and all others who wish to partake of it, are welcomed. Therefore most meeting-houses of the plain sects have their basements fitted with long tables and benches, a generous supply of china and cutlery, a stove big enough for making many quarts of coffee. And after the burial willing hands prepare the food and many take advantage of the proffered hospitality and file to the long tables, where bread, cheese, cold meat, coffee and sometimes beets and pie, await them. This was an important portion of what Aunt Rebecca called a “nice funeral,” and it was given to her.
Later in the day, while the nearest relatives were still together in the little house at Landisville, the lawyer arrived and read the will.
The Millers, who were so eager for their legacies, were impatient with all the legal phrasing, “Being of sound mind” and so forth. They sat up more attentively when the lawyer read, “do hereby bequeath.”
First came the wish that all real estate be sold, that personal property be given to her sister, the sum of five hundred dollars be given to the Mennonite Church at Landisville for the upkeep of the burial ground. Then the announcement of the sum of five thousand dollars to be equally divided among the heirs of Jonas Miller, deceased, the sum of five thousand dollars to her brother Amos Rohrer, a like amount to her sister, Mrs. Reist, the sum of ten thousand dollars to Martin Landis, husband of Elizabeth Anders, and the remainder, if any, to be divided equally between said brother Amos and sister Mary.
“Martin Landis!” exploded one of the Miller women, “who under the sun is he? To get ten thousand dollars of Rebecca’s money!”
“I’ll tell you,” spoke up Uncle Amos, “he’s an old beau of hers.”
“Well, who ever heard of such a thing! And here we are, her own blood, you might say, close relations of poor Jonas, and we get only five thousand to be divided into about twenty shares! It’s an outrage! Such a will ought to be broken!”
“I guess not,” came Uncle Amos’s firm reply. “It was all Rebecca’s money and hers to do with what suited her. She’s made me think a whole lot more of her by this here will. I’m glad to know she didn’t forget her old beau. She was a little prickly on the outside sometimes, but I guess her heart was soft after all. It’s all right, it’s all right, that will is! It ain’t for us to fuss about. She could have give the whole lot of it to some cat home or spent it while she lived. It was hers! If that’s all, lawyer, I guess we’ll go. Mary and I are satisfied and the rest got to be. I bet Rebecca got a lot o’ good thinkin’ how Martin Landis would get the surprise of his life when she was in her grave.”