“Good enough business for us,” said Alec.
“Well, what I want to know is,” said Mrs Murchison, “whether you are coming to the church you were born and brought up in, Abby, or not, tonight? There’s the first bell.”
“I’m not going to any church.” said Abby. “I went this morning. I’m going home to my baby.”
“Your father and mother,” said Mrs Murchison, “can go twice a day, and be none the worse for it. By the way, Father, did you know old Mrs Parr was dead? Died this morning at four o’clock. They telephoned for Dr Drummond, and I think they had little to do, for he had been up with her half the night already, Mrs Forsyth told me.”
“Did he go?” asked Mr Murchison.
“He did not, for the very good reason that he knew nothing about it. Mrs Forsyth answered the telephone, and told them he hadn’t been two hours in his bed, and she wouldn’t get him out again for an unconscious deathbed, and him with bronchitis on him and two sermons to preach today.”
“I’ll warrant Mrs Forsyth caught it in the morning,” said John Murchison.
“That she did. The doctor was as cross as two sticks that she hadn’t had him out to answer the phone. ‘I just spoke up,’ she said, ‘and told him I didn’t see how he was going to do any good to the pour soul over a telephone wire.’ ‘It isn’t that,’ he said, ‘but I might have put them on to Peter Fratch for the funeral. We’ve never had an undertaker in the church before,’ he said; ‘he’s just come, and he ought to be supported. Now I expect it’s too late, they’ll have gone to Liscombe.’ He rang them up right away, but they had.”
“Dr Drummond can’t stand Liscombe,” said Alec, as they all laughed a little at the Doctor’s foible, all except Advena, who laughed a great deal. She laughed wildly, then weakly. “I wouldn’t—think it a pleasure—to be buried by Liscombe myself!” she cried hysterically, and then laughed again until the tears ran down her face, and she lay back in her chair and moaned, still laughing.
Mr and Mrs Murchison, Alec, Stella, and Advena made up the family party; Oliver, for reasons of his own, would attend the River Avenue Methodist Church that evening. They slipped out presently into a crisp white winter night. The snow was banked on both sides of the street. Spreading garden fir trees huddled together weighted down with it; ragged icicles hung from the eaves or lay in long broken fingers on the trodden paths. The snow snapped and tore under their feet; there was a glorious moon that observed every tattered weed sticking up through the whiteness, and etched it with its shadow. The town lay under the moon almost dramatic, almost mysterious, so withdrawn it was out of the cold, so turned in upon its own soul of the fireplace. It might have stood, in the snow and the silence, for a shell and a symbol of the humanity within, for angels or other strangers to mark with curiosity. Mr and Mrs Murchison were neither angels nor strangers; they looked at it and saw that the Peterson place was still standing empty, and that old Mr Fisher hadn’t finished his new porch before zero weather came to stop him.