And they tramped all over the lawn flower-beds she was so proud of.
Any number of distant relations arrived, too, expecting supper and beds for the night and she hadn't much cooked ... Julie was never very forehanded, that has to be admitted. When Abner arrived home two days afterwards he found her in bed with nervous prostration and she was months getting over it. She didn't eat a thing for six weeks ... well, hardly anything. I heard she said if there really had been a funeral she couldn't have been more upset. But I never believed she really did say it.”
"You can't be sure," said Mrs. William MacCreery. "People do say such awful things. When they're upset the truth pops out. Julie's sister Clarice actually went and sang in the choir as usual the first Sunday after her husband was buried.”
"Not even a husband's funeral could damp Clarice down long," said Agatha Drew. "There was nothing SOLID about her. Always dancing and singing.”
"I used to dance and sing ... on the shore, where nobody heard me," said Myra Murray.
"Ah, but you've grown wiser since then," said Agatha.
"No-o-o, foolisher," said Myra Murray slowly. "Too foolish now to dance along the shore.”
"At first," said Emma, not to be cheated out of a complete story, "they thought the notice had been put in for a joke ... because Abner had lost his election a few days before ... but it turned out it was for an Amasa Cromwell, living away in the back woods the other side of Lowbridge ... no relation at all. He had really died. But it was a long time before people forgave Abner the disappointment, if they ever did.”
"Well, it WAS a little inconvenient driving all that distance, right in planting time, too, and finding you had your journey for your pains," said Mrs. Tom Chubb defensively.
"And people like funerals as a rule," said Mrs. Donald Reese with spirit. "We're all like children, I guess. I took Mary Anna to her uncle Gordon's funeral and she enjoyed it so. 'Ma, couldn't we dig him up and have the fun of burying him over again?' she said.”
They DID laugh at this ... everybody except Mrs. Elder Baxter, who primmed up her long thin face and jabbed the quilt mercilessly.
Nothing was sacred nowadays. Everyone laughed at everything. But she, an elder's wife, was not going to countenance any laughter connected with a funeral.
"Speaking of Abner, do you remember the obituary his brother John wrote for HIS wife?" asked Mrs. Allan Milgrave. "It started out with, 'God, for reasons best known to Himself, has been pleased to take my beautiful bride and leave my cousin William's ugly wife alive.' Shall I ever forget the fuss it made!”
"How did such a thing ever come to be printed at all?" asked Mrs.
Best.
"Why, he was managing editor of the Enterprise then. He worshipped his wife ... Bertha Morris, she was ... and he hated Mrs.
William Cromwell because she hadn't wanted him to marry Bertha.
She thought Bertha too flighty.”
"But she was pretty," said Elizabeth Kirk.
"The prettiest thing I ever saw in my life," agreed Mrs. Milgrave.
"Good looks ran in the Morrises. But fickle ... fickle as a breeze. Nobody ever knew how she came to stay in one mind long enough to marry John. They say her mother kept her up to the notch. Bertha was in love with Fred Reese but he was notorious for flirting. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,' Mrs.
Morris told her.”
"I've heard that proverb all my life," said Myra Murray, "and I wonder if it's true. Perhaps the birds in the bush could SING and the one in the hand couldn't.”
Nobody knew just what to say but Mrs. Tom Chubb said it anyhow.
"You're always so whimsical, Myra.”
"Do you know what Mary Anna said to me the other day?" said Mrs.
Donald. "She said, 'Ma, what will I do if nobody ever asks me to marry him?'“
"US old maids could answer that, couldn't we?" asked Celia Reese, giving Edith Bailey a nudge with her elbow. Celia disliked Edith because Edith was still rather pretty and not entirely out of the running.
"Gertrude Cromwell WAS ugly," said Mrs. Grant Clow. "She had a figure like a slat. But a great housekeeper. She washed every curtain she owned every month and if Bertha washed hers once a year it was as much as ever. And her window-shades were ALWAYS crooked.
Gertrude said it just gave her the shivers to drive past John Cromwell's house. And yet John Cromwell worshipped Bertha and William just put up with Gertrude. Men ARE strange. They say William overslept on his wedding morning and dressed in such a tearing hurry he got to the church with old shoes and odd socks on.”
"Well, that was better than Oliver Random," giggled Mrs. George Carr. "HE forgot to have a wedding suit made and his old Sunday suit was simply impossible. It had been PATCHED. So he borrowed his brother's best suit. It only fitted him here and there.”
"And at least William and Gertrude did get married," said Mrs.
Simon. "Her sister Caroline DIDN'T. She and Ronny Drew quarrelled over what minister they'd have marry them and never got married at all. Ronny was so mad he went and married Edna Stone before he'd time to cool off. Caroline went to the wedding. She held her head high but her face was like death.”
"But she held her tongue at least," said Sarah Taylor. "Philippa Abbey didn't. When Jim Mowbray jilted her she went to his wedding and said the bitterest things out loud all through the ceremony.
They were all Anglicans, of course," concluded Sarah Taylor, as if that accounted for any vagaries.
"Did she really go to the reception afterwards wearing all the jewelry Jim had given her while they were engaged?" asked Celia Reese.
"No, she didn't! I don't know how such stories get around, I'm sure. You'd think some people never did anything but repeat gossip. I daresay Jim Mowbray lived to wish he'd stuck to Philippa. His wife kept him down good and solid ... though he always had a riotous time in her absence.”
"The only time I ever saw Jim Mowbray was the night the junebugs nearly stampeded the congregation at the anniversary service in Lowbridge," said Christine Crawford. "And what the junebugs left undone Jim Mowbray contributed. It was a hot night and they had all the windows open. The junebugs just poured in and blundered about in hundreds. They picked up eighty-seven dead bugs on the choir platform the next morning. Some of the women got hysterical when the bugs flew too near their faces. Just across the aisles from me the new minister's wife was sitting ... Mrs. Peter Loring. She had on a big lace hat with willow plumes...”
"She was always considered far too dressy and extravagant for a minister's wife," interpolated Mrs. Elder Baxter.
"'Watch me flick that bug off Mrs. Preacher's hat,' I heard Jim Mowbray whisper ... he was sitting right behind her. He leaned forward and aimed a blow at the bug ... missed it, but side- swiped the hat and sent it skittering down the aisle clean to the communion railing. Jim almost had a conniption. When the minister saw his wife's hat come sailing through the air he lost his place in his sermon, couldn't find it again and gave up in despair. The choir sang the last hymn, dabbing at junebugs all the time. Jim went down and brought the hat back to Mrs. Loring. He expected a calling down, for she was said to be high-spirited. But she just stuck it on her pretty yellow head again and laughed at him. 'If you hadn't done that,' she said, 'Peter would have gone on for another twenty minutes and we'd all have been stark staring mad.' Of course, it was nice of her not to be angry but people thought it wasn't just the thing for her to say of her husband.”