n't say a word in it about being dead--I mean, there was no
sign of his being going to be--I mean, he wasn't a bit ill or anything
in his letter--"

"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice, "it ain't
exactly usual is it--I put it to you squarely, and say it ain't
_exactly_ usual (there may be exceptions, but it ain't exactly _usual_)
to come to a gentleman's funeral, and especially not all the way from
New York, without some sort of an idea that he's dead. Some sort of a
_general_ idea, anyhow," he added still more sarcastically; for his
admiration for the twins had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a
suspicion was growing on him that with incredible and horrible levity,
seeing what the moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up
the time waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
wreaths, by making game of him.

"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his voice
aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got down from his
seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired white faces and helped
them into his taxi,--only for genuine mourners, real sorry ones, going
to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg, would he, a
free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls, well-cared for
gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all this way, I guess
sent by your parents to represent them properly, and properly fitted out
in nice black clothes and all, and you start making fun. Pretending.
Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me about the funeral. Messing me up
in a lot of words. I don't like it. I'm a father myself, and I don't
like it. I don't like to see daughters going on like this when their
father ain't looking. It don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you
Easterners--"

The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at each other
in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way Uncle Arthur's
friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's mere approach.
People who had been living with their husbands all their lives ran away
just as the twins came on the scene; people who had been alive all their
lives went and died, also at that very moment. It almost seemed as if
directly anybody knew that they, the Twinklers, were coming to stay with
them they became bent on escape. They could only look at each other in
stricken astonishment at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of
what the driver