plume curling over
the side--the purple being considered a sort of complimentary
half-mourning. Squire Eben Merritt's wife, Abigail, could not
approach her, although she was finely dressed in black satin, and a
grand cashmere shawl from overseas. Mrs. Eben Merritt was a small and
plain-visaged little woman; people had always wondered why Squire
Eben Merritt had married her. Eben Merritt had not come to the
funeral. It was afterwards reported that he had gone fishing instead,
and people were scandalized, and indignantly triumphant, because it
was what they had expected of him. Little Lucina had come with her
mother, and sat in the high chair where they had placed her, with her
little morocco-shod feet dangling, her little hands crossed in her
lap, and her blue eyes looking out soberly and anxiously from her
best silk hood. Once in a while she glanced timidly at Jerome, and
reflected how he had given her sassafras, and how he hadn't any
father.

When the singing began, the tears came into her eyes and her lip
quivered; but she tried not to cry, although there were smothered
sobs all around her. There was that about the sweet, melancholy drone
of the funeral hymn which stirred something more than sympathy in the
hearts of the listeners. Imagination of like bereavements for
themselves awoke within them, and they wept for their own sorrows in
advance.

The minister offered a prayer, in which he made mention of all the
members of poor Abel's family, and even distant relatives. In fact,
Paulina Maria had furnished him with a list, which he had studied
furtively during the singing. "Don't forget any of 'em, or they won't
like it," she had charged. So the minister, Solomon Wells, bespoke
the comfort and support of the Lord in this affliction for all the
second and third cousins upon his list, who bowed their heads with a
sort of mournful importance as they listened.

Solomon Wells was an elderly man, tall, and bending limberly under
his age like an old willow, his spare long body in nicely kept
broadcloth sitting and rising with wide flaps of black coat-tails,
his eyes peering forth mildly through spectacles. He was a widower of
long standing. His daughter Eliza, who kept his house, sat beside
him. She resembled her father closely, and herself looked like an old
person anywhere but beside him. There the juvenility of comparison
was hers.

Solomon Wells, during the singing, before he offered prayer, had cast
sundry perple