That night, by the eerie light of the waning moon, I went at it with Uncle John's pick and shovel and buried the old witch's body next to Aunt Belle's rose bushes by the garage. My bright, new-incarnation girl lounged around and chatted sociably. Everything still had quite a dreamlike quality; the corpse was a final, nightmare touch. But even so, I was beginning to wonder a bit about things; such things as, specifically, where we went from there.
"Star-doll-baby—" well, hell, there are times when a man has to use terms like that to communicate with the female—"you aren't going to vanish all of a sudden and leave me now, are you? Ugh!" That was a heavy shovel and thick clay. "What are our plans?"
"Sil-ly. I understand your custom now. We are going to be married, of course. Then we shall see. There is no hurry. I have, by your standards, plenty of time. I must assimilate and learn to understand you and your fascinating life-form. We shall live together and be man and wife. As I have said, your species and mine may derive much benefit from this intermingling."
That, if I understood her correctly, sounded fine to me. It was the best proposal I'd had yet. And surely it would have been poor hospitality to a lonely little girl some light-years away from home for me to have refused. "This is terribly sudden," I told her. "Uf! That ought to be enough of a hole for as wizened up a little old body as that ... yes, darling, I will marry you. Who's going to earn us a living?"
III
I climbed out of the hole and kissed her and, in time, we did manage to get the old woman buried.