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This gro-o-oanin’ world ‘s too dark and
dre-e-ar for the saints’ e – ter – nal rest,

This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow overcoat. It was exasperating to think of the public spirit at Egypt, and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.

All these details flew through aunt Hitty’s mind in fascinating procession. There shouldn’t be “a hitch” anywhere. There had been a hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there. Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean’s old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anxious to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate her from the dilemma, and the operation made a long and somewhat awkward break in the religious services. Aunt Hitty always said of this catastrophe, “If I’d ‘a’ ben Mis’ Potter, I’d ‘a’ ben so mortified I believe I’d ‘a’ said, ‘I wa’n’t plannin’ to be buried, but now I’m in here I declare I’ll stop!'”

Old Mrs. Butterfield’s funeral was not only voted an entire success by the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being none to resist her right or grudge her the privilege aunt Hitty, for the first time in her life, rode in the next buggy to the hearse. Si, in his best suit, a broad weed and weepers, drove Cyse Higgins’s black colt, and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell’s crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that night, was: “It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in it. It would ‘a’ ben perfect if there’ ben anybody to shed tears. I come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain’t no relation, when Elder Weeks said, ‘You’ll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis’ Butterfield won’t be there; you’ll go int’ the orchard, and Mis’ Butterfield won’t be there; you’ll go int’ the barn and Mis’ Butterfield won’t be there; you’ll go int’ the shed, and Mis’ Butterfield won’t be there; you’ll go int’ the hencoop, and Mis’ Butterfield won’t be there!’ That would ‘a’ drawed tears from a stone most, ‘specially sence Mis’ Butterfield set such store by her hens.”

And this is the way that Lyddy Butterfield came into her kingdom, a little lone brown house on the river’s brim. She had seen it only once before when she had driven out from Portland, years ago, with her aunt. Mrs. Butterfield lived in Portland, but spent her summers in Edgewood on account of her chickens. She always explained that the country was dreadful dull for her, but good for the hens; they always laid so much better in the winter time.