"You had better go," Granny called from the kitchen. "I never saw him better-looking while he was alive."
"I won't," Keith yelled back with an amount of irritation that seemed quite out of proportion to its cause. The mother gave him an uneasy glance but left the room without saying anything at the time.
As far as the boy was concerned, the incident was closed. He had never permitted it to take a real hold of his mind, and he resented anybody's attempt to bring it closer to him. Death had stopped within his own threshold, and he simply looked in the opposite direction. This attitude sprang mainly from some inner resistance so stubborn that it would not even permit itself to be discussed. In addition, his mind was engrossed with other things, and the principal significance it attached to the passing of a human life at such close quarters was the hope it held out that the parlour might remain vacant.
"Were you afraid to look," the mother asked Keith on her return with the father from the cemetery.
"No, I just didn't want to," the boy replied emphatically.
"Why," the mother asked, studying his face with the peculiar searching glance that sometimes provoked him and sometimes filled him with a desire to bury his head in her lap and weep.
"Why should I," Keith rejoined. "He was dead!"
VI
No sooner had the apologetic young man removed the effects of his departed relative than Keith wanted to take full possession of the parlour. His mother checked his eagerness with the explanation that they might still want to rent it. In the meantime he could use it freely, but he must remove all his playthings when he was through for the day.