Amarilly considered.
"I will, if you'll throw in one of them caps fer my brother."
"All right," laughed the proprietor. "I think we'll call it a bargain.
See if you can't dig up one of those caps for her, Ben."
Without much difficulty Ben produced a cap, and Amarilly hurried home for the surplice. She went down to the Beehive every day during the wedding-window week and feasted her eyes on the beloved gown. She took all the glory of the success of the display to her own credit, and her feelings were very much like those of the writer of a play on a first night.
From a wedding to a funeral was the natural evolution of a surplice, but this time it did not appear in its customary rôle. Instead of adorning a minister, it clad the corpse. Mrs. Hudgers's only son, a scalawag, who had been a constant drain on his mother's small stipend, was taken ill and died, to the discreetly disguised relief of the neighborhood.
"I'm agoin' to give Hallie a good funeral," Mrs. Hudgers confided to
Amarilly. "I'm agoin' to hev hacks and flowers and singin' If yer St.
Mark's man was to hum now, I should like to have him fishyate."
"Who will you git?" asked Amarilly interestedly.
"I'll hev the preacher from the meetin'-house on the hill, Brother
Longgrass."
"I wonder," speculated Amarilly, "if he'd like to wear the surplus?"
Foremost as the plumes of Henry of Navarre in battle were the surplice and the renting thereof in Amarilly's vision.