BY ELIZABETH HYER NEFF
"An-ndrew! An-ndrew!"
"Yes, Marthy."
"Andrew, what be you doin' out there? You've ben sayin' 'Yes, Marthy,' for the last ten minutes."
The patient, middle-aged face of Andrew appeared in the doorway, its high, white forehead in sharp contrast with the deeply tanned features below it.
"I've jest ben takin' your buryin' clothes off the line an' foldin' 'em up. It is such a good day to air 'em for fall—and, then,—I jest hate to tell you!—the moths has got into the skirt of your shroud. I sunned it good, but the holes is there yet."
"Moths!" screamed the thin voice, sharpened by much calling to people in distant rooms. "Then they've got all over the house, I presume to say, if they've got into that. Why don't you keep it in the cedar chist?"
"Because it's full of your laid-by clothes now, and I keep my black suit that you had me git for the funeral in there, too. There ain't room. You told me allus to keep your buryin' clothes in a box in the spare room closet, so's they'd be handy to git if they was wanted in the night. You told me that four or five years ago, Marthy."
"So I did. And I presume to say that my good three-ply carpet that mother gave me when we was married is jest reddled with moths—if they're in that closet. If it wasn't for keepin' that spare room ready for the cousins in Maine when they come to the buryin', I'd have you take up that carpet and beat it good and store it in the garret. My, oh, my, what worries a body has when they can't git around to do for themselves! Now it's moths, right on top of Mr. Oldshaw's death after he'd got my discourse all prepared on the text I picked out for him. He had as good as preached it to me, and it was a powerful one, a warnin' to the ungodly not to be took unawares. I advised him to p'int it that way. Then, Jim Woodworth's Mary is leavin' the choir to marry and go west, and I jest won't have Palmyra Stockly sing 'Cool Siloam' over me. I can settle that right now, for I couldn't abide the way she acted about that church fair—and she sings through her nose anyway. An-ndrew!"
"Yes, Marthy."