Uncle Capen’s unmarried daughter, a woman of sixty, her two brothers and their wives, and half a dozen neighbors were sitting in the tidy kitchen, where a crackling wood-fire in the stove was suggesting a hospitable cup of tea.
The minister’s appearance, breaking the formal gloom, was welcomed.
“Well,” said Miss Maria, “I suppose the sermon is all writ by this time. I think likely you’ve come down to read it to us.”
“No,” said Holt, “I have left the actual writing of it till I get all my facts. I thought perhaps you might have thought of something else.”
“No; I told you everything there was about Father yesterday,” she said. “I’m sure you can’t lack of things to put in; why, Father lived a hundred years—and longer, too, for he was a hundred years and six days, you remember.”
“You know,” said Holt, “there are a great many things that are very interesting to a man’s immediate friends that don’t interest the public.”
And he looked to Mr. Small for confirmation.
“Yes, that’s so,” said Mr. Small, nodding wisely.
“But, you see, Father was a centenarian,” said Maria, “and so that makes everything about him interesting. It’s a lesson to the young, you know.”