“Oh, I'd fix for four couples, anyway. Thar is a certain crowd that always count on sech occasions—you know who they are as well as I do, I reckon?”
“Yes, Polly Long an' her bunch.” Amanda followed the man across the corridor into the room where the corpse lay, and as Paul was leaving he heard her continuing, plaintively: “Death is just the awfulest, awfulest thing we come across in this life, Brother Langston. We know so little—so powerful little about it. One minute we see the sparkle of the soul in the eye, hear a voice full of life; you catch a smile, or a knowin' look, an' maybe the next minute just a empty shell lies before you. Rafe was a good, patient man, an' he suffered a lot, fust an' last.”
“Did he make his peace?” Langston inquired. “That is the fust thought I have when a body dies. Do you think he was all right? He didn't go to meetin' often, an' I never happened to hear 'im say what his hopes of reward was.”
“I don't know—I really don't know,” Amanda returned, and Paul, lingering in the kitchen doorway, heard her voice falter. “Brother Langston, sometimes I was bothered purty sharp on that score. Him and Paul both used to repeat some o' Jim Hoag's terrible sayin's like they thought they was smart an' funny, an' neither one of 'em ever would read the Bible, or seek spiritual advice, an' sech a thing as family prayer, or a blessin' asked at the table was never heard in this house.”
“I know.” The masculine voice sounded louder now, as if its owner had come back into the corridor. “That's why I was axin'. Folks cayn't take up notions like Hoag has in a God-fearin' community like our'n an' flaunt 'em about without causin' comment. My own opinion is that Jim Hoag is a devil in the garb of a man. He's larnt Paul all the awful things the boy believes, an' a man that will lead the young off like that ought to be tarred an' feathered an' rid out o' the community on a sharp rail. If he didn't have so much money he'd 'a' been called down long ago.”
Paul was in the stable-yard when Amanda came out to him.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Your pa won't have to have new clothes; his Sunday suit will do for weather like this when I've ironed out the wrinkles; but you ought to buy 'im some black slippers, an' a pair o' white store socks an' a plain black necktie—they keep all sech at the furniture-store. You just tell 'em what's lackin' an' they will put 'em in.”
She glanced at her nephew's face in surprise, for it was flushed, and his eyes were flashing angrily.
“What's the matter?” she asked, leaning on the fence and eying him in growing wonder.
“I heard you an' Langston talkin' in thar, standin' right over 'im,” Paul blurted out, “an' him cold an' dead an' unable to take up for hisse'f. Make his peace nothin'! He died before he could settle the things he had to settle. If thar was sech a fool thing as a heaven, how could he enjoy it with Jeff Warren here gloatin' over him? But that will be settled. You hear me—that will be settled, an' before many days, too.”