As for Jeffy, he was feeling the importance of his position. With a fine sense of what was expected from him as a near relative he had spent the day in the stricken home: its most picturesque figure, seated bolt upright in the parlor, a spotless cotton handkerchief in his hand, and breathing an air of chastened sorrow.
He had exchanged mournful greetings with the friends of the family, and was conscious that he had acquitted himself to the admiration of all. The Swede “help,” who was new to Antioch, had thought him a person of the first distinction, so great was the curiosity merely to see him.
Christopher Berry was a little, dried-up man of fifty, whose name was chance, but whose profession was choice. He was his own best indorsement, for he was sere and yellow, and gave out a faint, dry perfume as of drugs, or tuberoses. “Well, Mrs. Joyce,” he was saying, as Oakley and the little artist entered the room, “I guess there ain't nothing else to settle. Don't take it so to heart; there are grand possibilities in death, even if we can't always realize them, and we got a perfect body. I can't remember when I seen death so majestic, and I may say—ca'm.”
Mrs. Joyce, who was crying, dried her eyes on the corner of her apron.
“Wasn't it sad about Smith Roberts's wife! And with all those children! Dear, dear! It's been such a sickly spring!”
The undertaker's face assumed an expression of even deeper gloom than was habitual to it. He coughed dryly and decorously behind his hand.
“They called in the other undertaker. I won't say I didn't feel it, Mrs. Joyce, for I did. I'd had the family trade, one might say, always. There was her father, his mother, two of her brothers, and the twins. You recollect the two twins, Mrs. Joyce, typhoid—in one day,” with as near an approach to enthusiasm as he ever allowed himself.
“Mrs. Poppleton told me over at Lou's that it was about the pleasantest funeral she'd ever been to, and it's durn few she's missed, I'm telling you!” remarked the outcast, hoarsely. He usually slept at the gas-house in the winter on a convenient pile of hot cinders, and was troubled with a bronchial affection. “She said she'd never seen so many flowers. Some of Roberts's folks sent 'em here all the ways from Chicago. Say! that didn't cost—oh no! I just wisht I'd the money. It'd do me for a spell.”
“Well, they may have had finer flowers than we got, but the floral offerings weren't much when the twins passed away. I remember thinking then that was a time for display, if one wanted display. Twins, you know—typhoid, too, and in one day!” He coughed dryly again behind his hand. “I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Joyce. Their body didn't compare with our body, and the body's the main thing, after all.” With which professional view of the case he took himself out into the night.
The outcast gave way to a burst of hoarse, throaty mirth. “It just makes Chris Berry sick to think there's any other undertakers, but he knows his business; I'll say that for him any time.”