SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROSE BRANDLE
Both these curious people looked at me as I read the lettering. Arm in arm they looked nice, cheerful, loving friends, a good deal like one another in the face, very gay and homely, and with a certain sparkling brightness, like the flowers they loved. To see them standing there proudly, smiling at the grey tombstone, smiling at me, under the sun, in the garden so full of life and of growing healthy things, gave me a sensation that Death was present in friendly guise, a constant welcome companion to my new friends, and a pleasant image even to myself.
“Second-hand,” said the tailor’s sister, “all except the name, and he put that in for me at a penny the letter: that came to elevenpence, so I gave him a shilling to make an even sum.”
“A guinea, as it stands,” said the tailor.
“You like it, sir?” asked his sister anxiously.
“On the contrary,” said I, “I admire it enormously.”
“As soon as I saw it,” she said, “I fell in love with it. It was standing at the back of the yard among a heap of stones. The sun was shining on it, and I said to myself, ‘If that’s cheap, it’s as good as mine.’ The man had cut it out years ago as an advertisement to put in the front of the yard, and it had a bit of paper pasted on it with his terms and what not—Funerals in the best style. Distance no object—and that sort of thing. I asked the price of it and he told me ‘One pound.’ ‘Cheap,’ I said, and he told me how ’twas so, since people nowadays like broken urns and pillars or something plainer, and had given up cherubs, and death-heads and suchlike. So I put down the money, and he popped it on a waggon that was coming back this way with a small load of Hay, and Tom put it up for me in the garden. Now I can die happy, sir.”
I asked her if she had no feelings about Death, and if the idea of leaving her garden and her cottage was not strange to her.