The man's voice quivered on the last word, and died away. Mrs. Burson went hurriedly into the house. She reappeared at the door in a few minutes without her bonnet.
"Erastus," she said gently, "will you split me a few sticks of kindling before you put away the team?"
Mrs. Burson was fitting a salad-green bodice on her elder daughter. That young woman's efforts to see her own spine, where her mother was distributing pins with solemn intentness, had dyed her face a somewhat unnatural red, but the hands that lay upon her downy arms were much whiter than those that hovered about her back. A dining-table, bearing the more permanent part of its outfit, was pushed into a corner of the room, and covered with a yellow mosquito-net, and from the kitchen came a sound of crockery accompanied by an occasional splash and a scraping of tin. Now and then the younger girl appeared in the doorway and gazed in a sort of worshipful ecstasy at her sister's splendor.
"Do you think you'll get it finished for the Fiesta, maw?" she asked, between deep breaths of admiration. Mrs. Burson nodded absently, exploring her bosom for another pin with her outspread palm.
Her husband came into the room, and seated himself on the edge of the rep lounge. His face had a strange pallor above the mask of his beard.
"You're home early, Erastus," she said; then she looked up. "Are you sick?" she asked with anxiety.
"Mr. Anthony is dead," Burson said huskily.
"Dead! Why, Erastus!"
Mrs. Burson held a pin suspended in the air and stared at her husband.