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“Well,” said she, with a sigh, “it is a happy release, after all, he’s been such a sufferer so long. It’s better for him, and it’s better for Jane and Narcissa. He’s left ’em comfortable; they’ve got the farm, and his life’s insured, you know. Besides, I suppose Narcissa ‘ll marry William Crane now. Most likely they’ll rent the farm, and Jane will go and live with Narcissa when she’s married. I want to know –”

Hannah Turbin sewed.

“I was wondering,” continued Mrs. Wheat, “if Jane and Narcissa wasn’t going to have some new black dresses for the funeral. They ‘ain’t got a thing that’s fit to wear, I know. I don’t suppose they’ve got much money on hand now except what little Richard saved up for his funeral expenses. I know he had a little for that because he told me so, but the life-insurance is coming in, and anybody would trust them. There’s a nice piece of black cashmere down to the store, a dollar a yard. I didn’t know but they’d get dresses off it; but Jane she never tells me anything – anybody ‘d think she might, seeing as I was poor Richard’s cousin; and as for Narcissa, she’s as close as her mother.”

Hannah Turbin sewed.

“‘Ain’t Jane and Narcissa said anything to you about making them any new black dresses to wear to the funeral?” asked Mrs. Wheat, with desperate directness.

“No, they ‘ain’t,” replied Hannah Turbin.

“Well, then, all I’ve got to say is they’d ought to be ashamed of themselves. There they’ve got fourteen if not fifteen hundred dollars coming in from poor Richard’s insurance money, and they ain’t even going to get decent clothes to wear to his funeral out of it. They ‘ain’t made any plans for new bonnets, I know. It ain’t showing proper respect to the poor man. Don’t you say so?”

“I suppose folks are their own best judges,” said Hannah Turbin, in her conclusive, half-surly fashion, which intimidated most of her neighbors. Mrs. Wheat did not stay much longer. When she went home through the ghostly weeds and grasses of the country road she was almost as indignant with Hannah Turbin as with Jane Stone and Narcissa.”Never saw anybody so close in my life,” said she to herself.”Needn’t talk if she don’t want to. Dun’no’ as thar’s any harm in my wanting to know if my own third cousin is going to have mourning wore for him.”

Mrs. Wheat, when she reached home, got a black shawl which had belonged to her mother out of the chest, where it had lain in camphor, and hung it on the clothesline to air. She also removed a spray of bright velvet flowers from her bonnet, and sewed in its place a black ostrich feather. She found an old crape veil too, and steamed it into stiffness.”I’m going to go to that funeral looking decent, if his own wife and daughter ain’t,” she told her husband.

“If I wa’n’t along, folks would take you for the widder,” said Nathan Wheat, with a chuckle. Nathan Wheat was rather inclined to be facetious with his wife.

However, Mrs. Wheat was not the only person who attended poor Richard Stone’s funeral in suitable attire. Hannah Turbin was black from head to foot; the material, it is true, was not of the conventional mourning kind, but the color was. She wore a black silk gown, a black ladies’-cloth mantle, a black velvet bonnet trimmed with black flowers, and a black lace veil.

“Hannah Turbin looked as if she was dressed in second mourning,” Mrs. Wheat said to her husband after the funeral.”I should have thought she’d most have worn some color, seeing as some folks might remember she was disappointed about Richard Stone; but, anyway, it was better than to go looking the way Jane and Narcissa did. There was Jane in that old brown dress, and Narcissa in her green, with a blue flower in her bonnet. I think it was dreadful, and poor Richard leaving them all that money through his dying, too.”