Lois stopped. “Mother, you can't make me believe that.”
“It's true, whether you believe it or not. I don't know anything about law, but I'm sure enough of that.”
Lois stood looking at her mother. “Then I'll put you there,” said she, in a cruel voice. “That's where you ought to go, mother.”
She went out of the room, and shut the door hard behind her; then she kept on through the house to the front porch, and sat down. She sat there all the morning, huddled up against a pillar. Her mother worked about the house; Lois could hear her now and then, and every time she shuddered. She had a feeling that the woman in the house was not her mother. Had she been familiar with the vampire superstition, she might have thought of that, and had a fancy that some fiend animated the sober, rigid body of the old New England woman with evil and abnormal life.
At noon Lois went in and ate some dinner mechanically; then she returned. Presently, as she sat there, a bell began tolling, and a funeral procession passed along the road below. Lois watched it listlessly—the black-draped hearse, the slow-marching bearers, the close-covered wagons, and the nodding horses. She could see it plainly through the thin spring branches. It was quite a long procession; she watched it until it passed. The cemetery was only a little way below the house, on the same side of the street. By twisting her head a little, she could have seen the black throng at the gate.
After a while the hearse and the carriages went past on their homeward road at a lively pace, the gate clicked, and Mrs. Jane Maxwell and a young man came up the walk.
Lois stood up shrinkingly as they approached, the door behind her opened, and she heard her mother's voice.
“Good-afternoon,” said Mrs. Field, with rigid ceremony, her mouth widened in a smile.
“Good-afternoon, Esther,” returned Mrs. Maxwell. “I've been to the funeral, an' I thought I'd jest run in a minute on my way home. I wanted to ask you an' your niece to come over an' take tea to-morrow. Flora, she'd come, but she didn't get out to the funeral. This is my nephew, Francis Arms, my sister's son. I s'pose you remember him when he was a little boy.”
Mrs. Field bowed primly to the young man. The old lady was eying Lois. “I s'pose this is your niece, Esther? I heard she'd come,” she said, with sharp graciousness.