Again Deb and Keturah confronted each other in the kitchen.
“Och, och, to think it!” sighed Deb.
“Well, ’tis natural, now isn’t it? They were old people.”
“Aye, but she’s that lonely; ’tis pitiful to see her distress.”
“But they died peaceful; neither one wanted other more than three hours; I’m thinkin’ the old man barely set foot in heaven before the old woman was travellin’ after him. If the Lord had ’a’ planned that,—and perhaps He did,—He couldn’t have done better, now could He? If Peter has the keys, as master says he has, he must have smiled to see those two old people hurryin’ so to get in together, the old woman with that hasty step of hers a-skippin’ after him.”
“Aye, aye, they went together,” sighed Deb, wiping away tears; “but, och! the mistress is like a distracted creature, pacin’ up and down, up and down the house, wringin’ her hands, her soft, pretty eyes all cried out, an’ goin’ every day to the grave where those poor souls lie.”
“Poor souls,” sniffed Keturah, “nothin’ could satisfy ye, Deborah. They’re lyin’ side by side in the same grave on earth, an’ singin’ an’ rejoicin’ hand-in-hand in heaven. Ye think too little an’ talk too much,” concluded Keturah, who thus far had done most of the talking herself.
The old woman had no patience with sentimentality about death, for she had served forty years in a minister’s family, where life in its birth, its growth, its death, had come and gone about her with epical fullness. There was little human history that Keturah’s old eyes had not as calmly surveyed as they looked now upon the tearful face of Deb.
“But she weeps so, poor dear, an’ the only time she seemed more cheerful was when the pastor came to bury the old people. When they came back from the grave she begged him to stay awhile, but he couldn’t, an’ then she cried an’ cried again, poor child.”
“Well, well,” said Keturah, with a shrewd, troubled look, “’tis a pity.”