She was disgusted with the deceased, she declared; she had never seen an uglier creature. She looked like a dried herring. And she glanced at Joanna’s rounded form as she spoke.
“You seem to have a fine figure,” she added, as if she were calculating mentally how she would arrange the shroud on those robust contours.
“I suppose you would like—” began Joanna, indignantly.
“People of very high position have passed through my hands,” interrupted the other in a piping voice, smiling. (She had lost two of her front teeth.) “Do me the favor to give me a little more wine. It is Cartaxo, isn’t it? Excellent wine!”
At last, at about four o’clock, to Jorge’s great relief they brought the coffin downstairs. The neighbors looked on curiously from their doors as it was carried out. Senhor Paula, through bravado, waved a good-by with his hand as it passed him, adding,—
“A good journey!”
“Are you not afraid of remaining here alone?” Jorge asked Joanna upstairs.
“No, sir; the dead can’t come to life again,” she answered. Not that she was not in reality afraid, but she expected Pedro to keep her company in her solitude.
Jorge returned with Sebastião to the house of the latter. “It is all over,” he said, entering the room where Luiza was in bed. “She is on her way to the heights of S. João,” he continued, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction, “with everything duly arranged for the journey. Per omnia saccula sacculorum!”
Aunt Joanna, who was sitting with Luiza, burst out hastily,—