"I wish he would," said Polly explosively, "and never come back again! He's more trouble than he's worth, and he knows more than all the rest of us put together."
"Give him to Aunt Jane for a wedding present," Alan proposed.
"She'd think 'twas signing her death warrant," answered Polly, laughing. "You know he did duty at the funeral of Mrs. Baxter the first."
"Oh dear, it seems as if they never would come!" sighed Jessie impatiently. "What does keep them so long?"
"Do somebody tell another story," said Florence. "Can't you,
Katharine?"
"I should never dare, after Alan's wonderful success," replied Katharine lightly, as she took out the daffodil she had been wearing in her buttonhole and tossed it over to her cousin. Then she added soberly, "It isn't any story at all, but I believe, while we wait, I'll tell you about the saddest funeral I ever saw in my life."
"Go on, Kit; you have the floor," said Alan encouragingly.
"It isn't much to tell, but you've no idea how pitiful it was to see," the girl went on thoughtfully. "Just a year ago this spring, papa had to go West on business, and he took me with him. We had to stay two or three days in a little bit of a town up in the Rocky Mountains, and while we were there, a young woman died. She had only been married a month, and had just come out from New England, to live in the cunning little new house that her husband had built. It was a winter of very deep snow, even for that region, and when it melted, it grew soft all the way down through, before it seemed to go away, any at all. The cemetery was away from the town, up on the side of the mountain, just the loneliest, most desolate place you can imagine; and it seemed so sad to take her away and leave her there all alone. It was a long, long procession, and papa and I stood at the window to watch it, as it went through the town, and on out into the open country, where no road had been broken. Then, for a mile or two, the long black line crawled along over the snow, while the horses floundered about, half buried in the drifts, and the hearse tipped this way and that, as first one wheel would sink down out of sight, and then another. At last it wound around the foot of the hill, and we couldn't see it any more; but I kept feeling so sorry for the poor little wife and for the lonely husband in his new house."
Katharine paused, but there was no word spoken, so she went on,—
"A month later we spent Sunday there, on our way home. The snow had all melted and, in the afternoon, I teased papa to walk up to the cemetery with me. We remembered the name, so we could find the grave easily enough. It was perfectly bare, without any grass on it, but at the head was a rough little cross made of two boards nailed together, with her name painted on it, in black letters that were a little unsteady, as if somebody's hand shook when he was making them; and at the foot of the cross lay one tiny bunch of white immortelles, to show that she wasn't quite forgotten. But when we turned to look at the view, it didn't seem sad, any more. The little, low, dingy town lay below us, as if she had risen above it, and all around us, the great, soft, kind mountains stood up in the sun to guard her and watch over her, in her sleep. The shabby cross and the little posy and the magnificent brown mountains were all so much more kind and loving than our piles of marble and fussy flowers arranged for show, that when I came down the hill, I didn't feel sorry for her, any longer."