Bill and Isabel led Jap from the room as the doctor drew the sheet over Flossy's face. Together the three left the cottage. In dazed silence they walked past the row of modest homes until the business street was reached. Across Main street they went, in stony silence, the girl clinging to an arm of each of her escorts. In front of the elm-shaded residence of Tom Granger, now stark and bare in its late autumn undress, they paused. Isabel, unheedful of the passing crowd, threw her arms around Jap's neck and kissed him passionately. A moment he held her in his arms, his tearless eyes burning. And in her awakened woman's heart, she knew that he was looking through her, beholding the trio of adored ones whose influence had made his heart a fitting habitation for her own. And in that consciousness Isabel Granger experienced no twinge of jealousy.
Silently she walked up the brick-paved path to the stately old house, as Jap and Bill turned back toward Main street. When they reached the office, they locked the door behind them. With the mechanical action of automata, they climbed to their stools and threw the belated issue of the Herald into type.
"Bill, can you do it?" Jap asked at length.
"I'll do my best," Bill said huskily. And his tears wet the type as he set up a brief obituary notice.
The morning of the funeral broke clear and sunny, as fall days come. The air was clear and sounds echoed for long distances. It was a joyous new day, and yet a threnody swept through its music. Something of this Jap and Bill felt as they hurried to the house of Death. Judge Bowers met them at the door. His face was red and overcast. He shifted uneasily.
"I sent for you, because we have to fix things decently for Flossy."
"Decently?" echoed Bill.
"Why, yes. Ma and me got the caskets and all that. Everything's 'tended to, but the service. You know Flossy was a free-thinker, and never belonged to no church."
"Well, what of it?" Bill said shortly.
"We have got to get somebody to preach a sermon," asserted the Judge, his flaccid face showing real concern. "I don't see how we are going to manage it. It looks queer to ask anybody to preach over a non-professor."