"In the end we done what I'd favoured from the beginnin': We ask' Mis' Crapwell if we couldn't bury Jennie in her white mull.
"'A shroud,' says Mis' Crapwell, grievin', 'made by a dressmaker with buttons?'
"'It's the part o' Jennie that wore it before that'll wear it now,' I says, reasonable, 'an' her soul never was buttoned into it anyways. An' it won't be now.'
"An' after a while we made her see it, an' that was the first regular dress ever wore to a buryin' in Friendship, by the one that was the one.
"I'll never forget when 'Leven come out o' that room, after she'd got through. We all went in—Mis' Crapwell an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb an' I, an' some more. An' I took 'Leven back in with me. An' as soon as I see Jennie I see it was Jennie come back—hair just as natural as if it was church Sunday mornin' an' her in her pew. We all knew it was so, an' we all said so, an' Mis' Crapwell, she just out cryin' like she'd broke her heart. An' when the first of it was over, she went acrost to 'Leven, an' 'Oh,' s'she, 'you've give her back to me. You give her back. God bless you!' she says to her. An' when I looked at 'Leven, I see the 'Huh?' look wasn't there at all. But they was a little somethin' on her face like she was proud, an' didn't quite want to show it—along of her features or complexion or somethin' never havin' had it spread on 'em before.
"Nex' mornin' o' course 'Leven put on the shroud again. I must say it give me the creeps to see her wearin' it, even if it did look like everybody's dresses. I donno what it is about such things, but they make somethin' scrunch inside o' you. Like when they got a new babtismal dish for the church, an' the minister's sister took the old one for a cake dish.
"S'I, to 'Leven, after breakfast:—
"We're goin' to line Jennie's grave this mornin'. I guess you'd like to go with us, wouldn't you?'
But I see her face with the old look, like the back o' somethin', or like you'd rubbed down the page when the ink was wet, an' had blurred the whole thing unreadable. An' I judged that, like enough, she knew nothin' whatever about grave-linin', done civilized.
"'I mean, I thought mebbe you'd like to help us some,' I says.