Somebody pitched in then, hasty and peaceful, and went to talking about Cemetery; and it looked like we was launched on a real quiet subject.
“I guess we’ve all got more friends up there then we’ve got in town,” says I. “When we go up there to walk on Sundays, I declare if I had to bow to all the graves I recognize I’d be kep’ busy.”
“I know,” says Mis’ Wilme, “when my niece was here from the City she said she had eighty on her calling list. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve got that many if I count the graves I know.’ ”
“Most of my acquaintances,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, sighing, “is in their coffins. I says to my husband when I looked over the Daily the other night: That most of the Local Items and Supper Table Jottings for me now would have to be dated Cemetery Lot.”
“I know, ladies,” says Mis’ Puppy, dreamy, “but ain’t it real aristocratic to live in a place so long that you know all the graves. We ain’t got much else to be aristocratic about. But that’s real like them county families you read about,” she says.
And up flared Mis’ Pettibone. “I donno’s there’s any need to make it so pointed to us that ain’t lived here so very long,” she said, “and that ain’t any friends at all in your Cemetery.”
“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Puppy, indulgent, “of course there’s them distinctions in any town.”
I was just feeling thankful from my bones out that they hadn’t met to my house, with Donnie staying home, when Mis’ Elkhorn come in from the kitchen to tell us supper was ready. And when she opened the door the smell of hot waffles come a dilly-nipping in, and it made me feel so kind of cozy and busy and alive and glad that I burst right out:
“Shucks, ladies!” I says. “So be we peck around for ’em I bet we could find things to fuss over right till the hearse backs up to the door.”
They all laughed a little then, but that was part from feeling embarrassed at going out to supper, like you always are. And when we did get out there, everybody scrabbled around to get away from whoever had just been her enemy. We didn’t say much while we et—like you don’t in company; and I set there thinking: