"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried with every step.
"You mustn't, Sally; you'll be punished for it——"
Cousin Judd shook with excitement; he was bullying her about her Christian submission. I went up to him suddenly and struck him on the arm with my fist.
"You let her alone!" I cried. "Let her alone!"
Somebody spoke out sharply, I think; a hand plucked me from behind—to my amazement my mother's.
"Olivia, Olivia May! I am surprised ... and your father not out of the house yet. Go up to your room and see if you can't learn to control yourself!"
After all there was some excuse for Cousin Judd. There was, in the general estimate, something more than fortuitous circumstance that went to my father's taking off. Early in the winter, when work had been stopped on the Zimmern building, there had been a good deal of talk about some local regulations as to the removal of scaffolding and the security of foot passengers. That the contractors had not been brought to book about it was thought to be due to official connivance; my father had written to the paper about it. But the scaffolding had remained until that morning of the high wind, when it came down all together and a bit of the wall with it. That my father should have been passing on his way to the courthouse at the moment, was a leaping together of circumstances that seemed somehow to have raised it to the plane of a moral instance. It provided just that element of the dramatic in human affairs, which somehow wakens the conviction of having always expected it; though it hardly appeared why my father, rather than the contractor or the convincing city official, should have been the victim. If it wasn't an act of Providence, it was so like one that it contributed to bring out to the funeral more people than might otherwise have ventured themselves in such weather.
It was also thought that if anything of that nature could have made up to her, my mother should have found much to console her in the funeral. The Masons took part in it, as also the G. A. R. and the Republican Club, though they might have made a more imposing show of numbers if all the societies had not been so largely composed of the same members. In addition to all this, my mother's crape came quite to the hem of her dress and Effie and I had new hats. I remember those hats very well; they had very tall crowns and narrow brims and velvet trimmings, and we tried them on for Pauline Allingham after we had gone up to bed the night before the funeral. Mrs. Allingham had called and Pauline had been allowed to come up to us. I remember her asking how we felt, and Effie's being as much impressed by the way in which I carried off the situation as if she had not been in the least concerned in it. And then we sat up in bed in our nightgowns and tried on the hats while Pauline walked about to get the effect from both sides, and refrained, in respect to the occasion, from offering any criticism.
It was the evening after the funeral and everybody had gone away but one good neighbour. The room had been set in order while we were away at the cemetery; the lamp was lit and there was a red glow on everything from the deep heart of the base burner. The woman went about softly to set a meal for us, and under the lamp there was a great bowl of quince marmalade which she had brought over neighbourly from her own stores; the colour of it played through the clear glass like a stain upon the white cloth. It happened to have been a favourite dish of my father's.