PAGE 4
The Mortuary Chest
by
Even Miss Ware smiled a little, and adjusted her gold beads. The others laughed out rich and free.
“Well, what’d that have to do with Isabel?” asked Mrs. Ellison, who never forgot the main issue.
“Why, everybody else drawed down their faces, an’ tried to keep ’em straight, but Isabel, she begun to laugh, an’ she laughed till the tears streamed down her cheeks. Deacon Pitts was real put out, for him, an’ the parson tried not to take no notice. But it went so fur he couldn’t help it, an’ so he says, ‘Miss Isabel, I’m real pained,’ says he. But ’twas jest as you’d cuff the kitten for snarlin’ up your yarn.”
“Well, what’s Isabel goin’ to do?” asked Mrs. Ellison. “S’pose she’ll marry him?”
“Why, she won’t unless he tells her to. If he does, I dunno but she’ll think she’s got to.”
“I say it’s a shame,” put in Mrs. Robbins incisively; “an’ Isabel with everything all fixed complete so ‘t she could have a good time. Her sister’s well married, an’ Isabel stays every night with her. Them two girls have been together ever sence their father died. An’ here she’s got the school, an’ she’s goin’ to Sudleigh every Saturday to take lessons in readin’, an’ she’d be as happy as a cricket, if on’y he’d let her alone.”
“She reads real well,” said Mrs. Ellison. “She come over to our sociable an’ read for us. She could turn herself into anybody she’d a mind to. Len wrote a notice of it for the ‘Star.’ That’s the only time we’ve had oysters over our way.”
“I’d let it be the last,” piped up a thin old lady, with a long figured veil over her face. “It’s my opinion oysters lead to dancin’.”
“Well, let ’em lead,” said optimistic Mrs. Page. “I guess we needn’t foller.”
“Them that have got rheumatism in their knees can stay behind,” said the young married woman, drawn by the heat of the moment into a daring at once to be repented. “Mrs. Ellison, you’re getting ahead of us over in your parish. They say you sing out of sheet music.”
“Yes, they do say so,” interrupted the old lady under the figured veil. “If there’s any worship in sheet music, I’d like to know it!”
“Come, come!” said peace-loving Mrs. Page; “there’s the men filin’ in. We mustn’t let ’em see us squabblin’. They think we’re a lot o’ cacklin’ hens anyway, tickled to death over a piece o’ chalk. There’s Isabel, now. She’s goin’ to look like her aunt Mary Ellen, over to Saltash.”
Isabel preceded the men, who were pausing for a word at the door, and went down the aisle to her pew. She bowed to one and another, in passing, and her color rose. They could not altogether restrain their guiltily curious gaze, and Isabel knew she had been talked over. She was a healthy-looking girl, with clear blue eyes and a quantity of soft brown hair. Her face was rather large-featured, and one could see that, if the world went well with her, she would be among those who develop beauty in middle life.
The group of dames dispensed to their several pews, and settled their faces into expressions more becoming a Sunday mood. The village folk, who had time for a hot dinner, dropped in, one by one, and by and by the parson came,–a gaunt man, with thick red-brown hair streaked with dull gray, and red-brown, sanguine eyes. He was much beloved; but something impulsive and unevenly balanced in his nature led even his people to regard him with more or less patronage. He kept his eyes rigorously averted from Isabel’s pew, in passing; but when he reached the pulpit, and began unpinning his heavy gray shawl, he did glance at her, and his face grew warm. But Isabel did not look at him, and all through the service she sat with a haughty pose of the head, gazing down into her lap. When it was over, she waited for no one, since her sister was not at church, but sped away down the snowy road.