"That is a sorter good joke," he said, his small eyes on Henley, "considering the man you mean it for, but as I stood thar hearin' you concoct it I couldn't help thinking if you knowed what a joke this self-same peddler had got off on you you'd not be exactly in the mood for fun—at least not in the grave-rock line."
"What joke are you talking about?" Henley asked, incredulously, his face falling into seriousness. "I have never laid eyes on this chap before."
"I reckon not, but you'll know him the next time you see him; I'll be bound you do, even if you are a mile down the road an' he's round the bend with his back turned to you. The truth is, I just followed him down here to see who he'd strike next. He's been to our house, Alf. He slid in there just after you come off, and set on the porch and begun his palaver. He has a different way with women than he has with men. He seems to know that women are soft on some lines, and chiefly on preachin' and buryin'. He'd picked up a list of folks round about here that had lost kin, and he had me and Jane down on it on account of Dick. Now, it seems that when he gits to a place he goes to the graveyard and looks for stones to tally with his dead list, and when he don't find any he makes a note of it; so, you see, havin' Dick's name down, an' not knowin' the full particulars, he hunted us up, thinkin' we was unsupplied in his line. So, you see, that's why he made sech a leech of hisse'f on our porch."
"Huh, I see," Henley frowned—"I see."
"I can't begin to describe all the chap done or said," Wrinkle resumed. "He riz and walked and ranted, an' prayed an' sung an' mighty nigh called up mourners. I thought them two women would bust out cryin' once or twice, but they belt in tiptop through the hottest of the wrangle. Then I thought I'd put a stop to it, and I up and told him, I did, that he'd made a mistake, an' that we didn't need a thing of the sort—that Dick's body never was recovered, and so on. Then what do you think? The skunk was actually flabbergasted, and didn't know what to say. But he was game, and knowed thar was some way out of his trouble. He said, 'Wait a minute—don't bother me!' an' he shet his eyes tight, an' set thar with his head hangin' down for fully five minutes. Then he looked up an' said, 'I was jest tryin' to recall the good lady's name that had the same trouble, pine blank, as your'n, but it slips me somehow.' An' with that he said it was the custom all over civilized Christendom, in such cases as our'n, to erect a suitable monument jest the same, havin' a plot the right length an' width set aside, with both head and foot rock, and, if a sermon hadn't been preached already, one ought to be on the day the stone was put in place an' consecrated. I 'lowed sure them women would see how plumb silly it was, but they listened like they was gittin' the only directions to the Golden Shore, and begun to look at the pictures in his book like they thought the skunk was savin' 'em from death, destruction, an' disgrace."
"You don't mean to tell me they actually went and ordered—" Henley began, but his voice trailed away into indistinctness. He could only stare at his tormentor hopelessly.
"Only a little one fur five hundred dollars," Wrinkle said, with evident enjoyment. "They had a lots o' trouble pickin' out the design amongst all the doves, broke-off pillars, seraphims, an' angels, but they finally got what they wanted. Not a tear was shed, if you'd stood off a few feet, out o' earshot, you couldn't 'a' told but what they was pickin' out a pattern fer a weddin'-dress or buyin' tickets fer a side-show. After they got under headway I couldn't say anything—they had sech a solemn way about it, and then I couldn't help but be fair and think if I'd been in Dick's place they would have gone through exactly the same antics, an' been jest as liberal in showing due respect. Hettie says it is all to come out of her own money that she had when she married you. She was particular to mention the fact, and I think that showed a sensible streak, for a fool would know you oughtn't to be expected to stand sech expense, and so long after you took her, and that being a thing that would naturally belong to her past career, too. After the agent had gone off I set thar, an' Hettie told me what she was goin' to do. She don't intend to spare expense to do the thing plumb right. She's goin' to send away off for a high-priced reverential orator to give the discourse, an' intends to have evergreens hung all over the church. I don't know whether she designs to have all the business houses in Chester closed that day, but she'd naturally expect you and Jim to shet up an' take it in."
"So this is the joke you said that man had got off on me, is it?" Henley snapped out, irritably.
"Well, I reckon it mought not appear exactly in the same light to you, Alf," answered Wrinkle, "as it would to somebody who'd be more inclined to laugh over a thing of the sort. You was gettin' off what you called a good one on old Tight-fist just now by puttin' this chap on his track, and I reckon you'd have no call to git mad if Welborne made it tit for tat an' fired back at you. You wouldn't be justified in killin' 'im, you know, if he was to take a notion to send you a big bouquet o' flowers out o' his gyarden all tied up in black ribbon with a cyard sayin' he's sorry to hear of the sad loss in yore family, an'—"
"Ah, you make me sick, with your eternal chatter!" Henley burst out, angrily. "I don't care what them two silly women do. I'll not be here to witness such tomfoolery. I'm going to Texas, to be away several months."