Millie spoke to the figure and received no answer. Then, frightened, she
knew she had seen a "token" of Granma Wandon's approaching death.
* * * * *
In the parlour stood the black coffin on trestles; the door open, for we
had a fear of cats getting at the body,--we could glimpse the ominous
black object as we sat down to breakfast. And I laid my head on the
table and wept as much because of that sight as over the loss of my old
comrade and playmate.
Something vivid had gone out of my life. And for the first time I felt
and knew the actuality of death. Like a universe-filling, soft,
impalpable dust it slowly sifted over me, bearing me under. I saw for
the first time into all the full graves of the world.
* * * * *
To my great-grandmother's funeral came many distant relatives I had
never rested eye on before ... especially there came my Great-aunt
Rachel, Granma Gregory's sister,--a woman just as sweet-natured as she,
and almost her twin even to the blue rupture of a vein in the middle of
the lower lip. She, too, had a slightly protrusive stomach over which
she had the habit of folding her hard-working hands restfully, when she
talked ... and also there came with her my Great-uncle Joshua, her
husband ... and my second cousins, Paul and Phoebe, their children. The
other children, two girls, were off studying in a nurses' college .
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