He had to clean and oil the wheels of his road-wagon, and he went to the barn-yard and set to work.
CHAPTER XLII
There was but scant attendance at the burial of Jane Holder. The men she had known, and with whom she had laughed, danced, jested, and sung, under the veil of night, for obvious reasons could not attend in open daylight such rites, simple and unobtrusive though they were. In like manner, Jane's female associates were chary about being in evidence. Moreover, such irresponsible human butterflies are said to have morbid fears of death, and this particular case was surely nature's grimmest reminder.
Lizzie Trott went, of course, and Mandy and Jake walked behind her, solemnly and sedately self-righteous. The spot set aside for Jane's remains to repose in was in an unused, weed-overgrown corner of the public cemetery—the spot decided on by the town clerk, who granted the permit at the price required alike for respected or unrespected interment. The undertaker's men, in a perfunctory way, did the work of lowering the flower-covered casket into the damp red clay which was intermixed with round, prehistoric pebbles. The white sexton of the cemetery, an old man, bowed and gray, took charge of the filling of the grave with earth and shaping a mound on the surface.
The hearse, the black-plumed horses, and the undertaker's men went away. Jake and Mandy again fell in behind Lizzie and they walked down the hill to the deserted house.
"I cooked enough fer yo' supper, Mis' Trott," Mandy said at the gate. "Jake say dat I mustn't come back ter you any mo'."
"Very well, Mandy," Lizzie said, wearily. "Good-by."
"Good-by, Mis' Trott. Me 'n' Jake bofe sorry fer you."
"Yas'm, we is," Jake intoned, doffing his hat and sliding his flat feet backward.