"You mustn't worry yourself, old chap," he said to John with his usual partiality for seductive advice. "You can't do anything now. None of us can do anything till the funeral, though I've written to Eleanor to bring my top-hat with her when she comes."
The embarrassment of death's presence hung heavily over the household. The various members sat down to supper with apologetic glances at one another, and nobody took a second helping of any dish. The children were only corrected in whispers for their manners, but they were given to understand by reproachful head-shakes that for a child to put his elbows on the table or crumble his bread or drink with his mouth full was at such a time a cruel exhibition of levity. John could not help contrasting the treatment of children at a death with their treatment at a birth. Had a baby arrived upstairs, they would have been hustled out of sight and sound of the unclean event; but over death they were expected to gloat, and their curiosity was encouraged as the fit expression of filial piety.
"Yes, Frida, darling, dear Grandmama will have lots and lots of lovely white flowers. Don't kick the table, sweetheart. Think of dear Grandmama looking down at you from Heaven, and don't kick the table-leg, my precious," said Edith in tremulous accents, gently smoothing back her daughter's indefinite hair.
"Can people only see from Heaven or can they hear?" asked Harold.
"Hush, my boy," his Uncle Laurence interposed. "These are mysteries into which God does not permit us to inquire too deeply. Let it suffice that our lightest actions are known. We cannot escape the omniscient eye."
"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see her?"
"At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to hear you being persistent like this."
Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant orthodoxy. All managed to abstain while they were eating from any more conspicuous intrusion of the flesh than was inevitable; but there was a painful scene after supper, because Frida insisted that she was frightened to sleep alone, and refused to be comforted by the offer of Viola for company. The terrible increase of Grandmama's powers of hearing and seeing might extend to new powers of locomotion in the middle of the night, in which case Viola would be no protection.
"But Grandmama is in Heaven, darling," her mother urged.
"I want to sleep with you. I'm frightened. I want to sleep with you," she wailed.