“But they ought to got past the poplars by this time, then,” remarked Warren.
“Why, they’ll be drivin’ as slow as molasses in January,” put in Si Hummaston. “When you come to think of it, it is pretty nigh the same as a regular funeral. You mark my words, your father’ll have walked them grays every step of the road. I s’pose he’ll drive himself—he wouldn’t trust bringin’ Alvy home to nobody else, would he? I know I wouldn’t, if the Lord had given me such a son; but then he didn’t!”
“No, He didn’t!” commented the first speaker, in an unnaturally loud tone of voice, to break in upon the chance that Hi Tuckerman was going to try to talk. But Hi only stretched out his arm, pointing the forefinger toward the poplars.
Sure enough, something was in motion down at the base of the shadows on the road. Then it crept forward, out in the sunlight, and separated itself into two vehicles. A farm wagon came first, drawn by a team of gray horses. Close after it came a buggy, with its black top raised. Both advanced so slowly that they seemed scarcely to be moving at all.
“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Si Hummaston, after a minute, “it’s Dana Pillsbury drivin’ the wagon after all! Well—I dunno—yes, I guess that’s prob’bly what I’d ’a’ done too, if I’d b’n your father. Yes, it does look more correct, his follerin’ on behind, like that. I s’pose that’s Alvy’s widder in the buggy there with him.”
“Yes, that’s Serena—it looks like her little girl with her,” said Myron, gravely.
“I s’pose we might’s well be movin’ along down,” observed his brother, and at that we all started.
We walked more slowly now, matching our gait to the snail-like progress of those coming toward us. As we drew near to the gate, the three hired men instinctively fell behind the brothers, and in that position the group halted on the grass, facing the driveway where it left the main road. Not a word was uttered by any one. When at last the wagon came up, Myron and Warren took off their hats, and the others followed suit, all holding them poised at the level of their shoulders.
Dana Pillsbury, carrying himself rigidly upright on the box-seat, drove past us with eyes fixed straight ahead, and a face as coldly expressionless as that of a wooden Indian. The wagon was covered all over with rubber blankets, so that whatever it bore was hidden. Only a few paces behind came the buggy, and my grandfather, old Arphaxed Turnbull, went by in his turn with the same averted, faraway gaze, and the same resolutely stolid countenance. He held the restive young carriage horse down to a decorous walk, a single firm hand on the tight reins, without so much as looking at it. The strong yellow light of the declining sun poured full upon his long gray beard, his shaven upper lip, his dark-skinned, lean, domineering face—and made me think of some hard and gloomy old prophet seeing a vision, in the back part of the Old Testament. If that woman beside him, swathed in heavy black raiment, and holding a child up against her arm, was my Aunt Serena, I should never have guessed it.
We put on our hats again, and walked up the driveway with measured step behind the carriage till it stopped at the side-piazza stoop. The wagon had passed on toward the big new red barn—and crossing its course I saw my Aunt Em, bareheaded and with her sleeves rolled up, going to the cow-barn with a milking-pail in her hand. She was walking quickly, as if in a great hurry.