Then the major went to his house and found his widow sitting on the front porch talking to Myers, the man to whom she was engaged to be married. As he entered the gate his widow gave one little start of surprise, and then, regaining her composure, she said to Myers,
"Isn't this a new kind of an idea—dead people coming around when common decency requires them to keep quiet?"
"It's altogether wrong," said Myers. "If I was dead, I'd lie still and quit wandering about over the face of the earth."
"Maria, don't you know me?" asked the major, indignantly.
"I used to know you when you were alive; but now that you're gone, I don't expect to recognize you until we meet in a better world."
"But, Maria, I am not dead. You certainly see that I am alive."
"Not dead! Didn't you send word to me that you were? Am I to refuse to believe my own husband? The life insurance company says you are deceased; the lodge says so; the coroner officially asserts the fact. What am I to do? The evidence is all one way."
"But you shall accept me as alive!" shouted the major, in a rage.
"Mr. Myers," said the widow, calmly, "hadn't we better send for the undertaker to come and bury these remains?"
"Look here!" said Myers. "I'm the last man to do a dead friend an injury, but I ain't going to have any departed spirit coming in here and giving this lady hysterics. You pack up and go back, and stay there, or I'll have you hustled into a tomb quicker'n lightning. Hurry up now; don't stop to think about it!"