“Smilin’?” repeated the grocer. “Guess I’d better go ’n’ see.”
In very truth, Brother Joash lay there in his bed, dead and cold, with a smile on his hard old lips, the first he had ever worn. And a most sardonic and discomforting smile it was.
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The Reverend Mr. Pursly read Mr. Hitt’s funeral address for the second time, in the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket. Every seat was filled; every ear was attentive. He stood on the platform, and below him, supported on decorously covered trestles, stood the coffin that enclosed all that was mortal of Brother Joash Hitt. Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir-gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him; he did not dare to let his eye wander to the dark left-hand corner of the church, remembering the dark left-hand corner of his own study. And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the “clk!” of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol-shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.
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The streets of ’Quawket were at their gayest and brightest when the mourners drove home from the cemetery at the close of the noontide hour. The mourners were principally the deacons and elders of the First Church. The Reverend Mr. Pursly lay back in his seat with a pleasing yet fatigued consciousness of duty performed and martyrdom achieved. He was exhausted, but humbly happy. As they drove along, he looked with a speculative eye on one or two eligible sites for the Parish House. His companion in the carriage was Mr. Uriel Hankinson, Brother Joash’s lawyer, whose entire character had been aptly summed up by one of his fellow-citizens in conferring on him the designation of “a little Joash for one cent.”
“Parson,” said Mr. Hankinson, breaking a long silence, “that was a fust-rate oration you made.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so,” replied Mr. Pursly, his chronic smile broadening.
“You treated the deceased right handsome, considerin’,” went on the lawyer Hankinson.