"Sometimes a thing you've heard always will come at you sudden, like a star had fell on your very head. It was that way with me that day. 'Put on thy beautiful garments ...' I says over, 'Put 'em on—put 'em on!' An' all the while I was seein' to the supper for the crowd that was goin' to be there—train relations an' all—I kep' thinkin' that over like a song—'Put 'em on—put 'em on—put 'em on!' An' it was in me yet, like a song had come to life there, when they'd all gone to the cemetery—'Leven with 'em—an' I'd got through straightenin' the chairs—or rather crookedin' 'em some into loops from funeral lines—an' slipped over to my house, back way. For I ain't sunk so low as to be that sympathetic that I'll stay to supper after the funeral just because I've helped at it. There's a time to mourn an' there's a time to eat, an' you better do one with the bereaved an' slip home to your own butt'ry shelf for the other, I say.
"I was just goin' through the side yard to my house when I see 'em comin' back from the cemetery, an' I waited a little, lookin' to see what was sproutin' in the flower-bed. It was a beautiful, beautiful evenin'—when I think of it it seems I can breathe it in yet. It was 'most sunset, an' it was like the West was a big, blue bowl with eggs beat up in it, yolks an' whites, some gold an' some feathery. But the bowl wa'n't big enough, an' it had spilled over an' flooded the whole world yellowish, or all floatin' shinin' in the air. It was like the world had done the way the Bible said—put on its beautiful garments. I was thinkin' that when 'Leven come in the front gate. She was walkin' fast, an' lookin' up, not down. Her cheeks was some pink, an' the light made the shroud all pinkey, an' she looked rill nice. An' I marched straight up to her, feelin' like I was swimmin' in that lovely light:—
"''Leven,' I says, ''Leven—it's like the whole world was made over to-night, ain't it?'
"'Yes,' says she—an' not 'Huh?' at all.
"'Seems like another world than when we met on the street corner, don't it?' I says.
"'Yes,' she says again, noddin'—an' I thought how she'd stood there on the sidewalk, hungry an' her hands all black, an' believin' she couldn't do anything at all. An' it seemed like I hed sort o' scrabbled her up an' held her over a precipice, an' said to her: 'See the dead. Look at yourself. Come forth—come forth! Clean up—do somethin' to help, anything, if it's only tackin' on evergreens an' doin' the Dead's hair up becomin'—' oh, I s'pose, rilly, I was sayin' to her: 'Put on thy beautiful garments. Awake. Put on thy strength.' Only it come out some differ'nt from me than it come from Isaiah.
"I took a-hold of her hand—quite clean by the second day's washin', though I ain't much given to the same (not meanin' second day's washin's). I didn't know quite what I was goin' to say, but just then I looked up Daphne Street, an' I see 'em all sprinkled along comin' from the funeral—neighbours an' friends an' just folks—an' most of 'em livin' in Friendship peaceful an'—barrin' slopovers—doin' the level best they could. Not all of 'em hearin' the Bell, you understand, nor knowin' it by name if they did hear. But in little ways, an' because it was secunt nature, just helpin', helpin', helpin' ... Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Liddy Ember, Abagail Arnold an' her husband, that was alive then, hurryin' to open the home bakery to catch the funeral trade on the funeral's way back, Amanda an' Timothy Toplady rattlin' by in the wagon an' 'most likely scrappin' over the new springs ... an' all of 'em salt good at heart.
"''Leven,' I says, out o' the fulness o' the lump in my throat, 'stay here with us. Find somethin' honest you can do, an' stay here an' do it. Mebbe,' I told her, 'you could start dressin' the Dead's hair. An' help us,' I says, 'help us.'
"She looked up in my eyes quick, an' my heart stood still. An' then it sunk down an' down.
"'I want to go back ...' she says, 'I want to go back ...' but I'm glad to remember that even for a minute I didn't doubt God's position, because I remember thinkin' swift that if Him an' I had failed it wasn't for no inscrutable reason o' His, but He was feelin' just as bad over it as I was, an' worse.... 'I want to go back,' 'Leven finished up, 'an' get Big Lil, too.'