“All that evenin’ Eb an’ Elspie an’ I set by the cook stove, talkin’, an’ they seemed to be plenty to talk about, an’ the air in the room was easy to get through with what you hed to say it was that kind of an evenin’. Eb was pretty quiet, though, excep’ when he piped up to agree. ‘Gettin’ little too hot here, ain’t it?’ I know I said once; an’ Eb see right off he was roasted an’ he spried ‘round the draughts like mad. An’ a little bit afterwards I says, with malice the fourth thought: ’I can feel my shoulders some chilly,’ I says an’ he acted fair chatterin’-toothed himself, an’ went off headfirst for the woodpile. I noticed that, an’ laughed to myself, kind o’ pityin’. But Elspie, she never noticed. An’ when it come time to lock up, I ’tended to my wrist an’ let them two do the lockin’. They seemed to like to I could tell that. An’ Elspie, she let Eb out the front door herself, like they was rill folks.

“Nex’ day I was gettin’ ready for Sum Merriman’s funeral, it was to be at one o’clock, when Elspie come in my room, sort o’ shyin’ up to me gentle.

“‘Miss Cally,’ ’s’she, ’do you think the mourners’d take it wrong if I’s to go to the funeral?’

“‘Why, no, Elspie,’ I says, su’prised; ’only what do you want to go for?’ I ask’ her.

“‘Oh, I donno,’ s’she. ‘I’d like to go an’ I’d like to ride to the graveyard. I’ve watched the funerals through the poorhouse fence. An’ I’d kind o’ like to be one o’ the followers, for once all lookin’ friendly an’ together so, in a line.’

“‘Go with me then, child,’ I says. An’ she done so.

“Bein’ summer, the funeral flowers was perfectly beautiful. They was a rill hothouse box from the Proudfits; an’ a anchor an’ two crosses an’ a red geranium lantern; an’ a fruit piece made o’ straw flowers from the other merchants; an’ seven pillows, good-sized, an’ with all different wordin’, an’ so on. The mound at the side o’ the grave was piled knee-high, an’ Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman, I heard, said it seemed like Sum was less dead than almost anybody ‘t’d died in Friendship, bein’ the grave kind o’ spoke up, friendly, when you see the flowers. She went home rill cheerful from the funeral an’ was able to help get the supper for the out-o’-town relations, a thing no widow ever thinks of, anyway till the next day though Sum was her second husband, so it was a little different than most.

“Well, a few of us waited ’round the cemetery afterwards to fix the flowers on the top o’ the sod, an’ Elspie, she waited with me fussin’ quiet with one thing an’ another. Eb, he waited too, standin’ ’round. An’ when it come time for us women to lay the set pieces on, I see Elspie an’ Eb walkin’ off toward the top o’ the cemetery hill. It’s a pretty view from there, lookin’ down the slope toward the Old Part, where nobody remembered much who was buried, an’ it’s a rill popular walk. I liked seein’ ’em go ‘long together some way, lookin’ at ’em, Elspie so pretty an’ Eb so kind o’ gentle, you could ‘a’ thought they was rill folks, her sane an’ him with a spine. I slipped off an’ left ‘em, the cemetery bein’ so near my house, an’ Eb walked home with her. ‘Poor things,’ I thought, ‘if he does go back to peddlin’ an’ she has to go to the Alice County poorhouse, I’ll give ’em this funeral afternoon for a bright spot, anyhow.’

“But I’d just about decided that Elspie wa’n’t to go to Alice County. I hadn’t looked the i-dee in the face an’ thought about it, very financial. But I ain’t sure you get your best lights when you do that. I’d just sort o’ decided on it out o’ pure shame for the shabby trick o’ not doin’ so. I hadn’t said anything about it to Timothy or Silas or any o’ the rest, because I didn’t hev the strength to go through the arguin’ agony. When the Dick Dasher had pulled out without her, final, I judged they’d be easier to manage. An’ that evenin’ I told Elspie just to sort o’ clamp myself to myself; an’ I fair never see anybody so happy as she was. It made me ashamed o’ myself for not doin’ different everything I done.

“I was up early that Friday mornin’, because I judged’t when Elspie wasn’t to the train some o’ them in charge’d come tearin’ to my house to find out why. I hadn’t called Elspie, an’ I s’posed she was asleep in the other bedroom. I was washin’ up my breakfast dishes quiet, so’s not to disturb her, when I heard somebody come on to the front stoop like they’d been sent for.

“‘There,’ thinks I, ‘just as I expected. It’s one o’ the managers.’

“But it wa’n’t a manager. When I’d got to the front door, lo an’ the hold! there standin’ on the steps, wild an’ white, was the widow o’ the day before’s funeral Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman, lookin’ like the grave hed spoke up. She’d got up early to go alone to the cemetery, an’, my house bein’ the nearest, she’d come rushin’ back to me with her news.

“‘Cally!’ s’she, from almost before she laid eyes on me, ’Cally! Somebody’s stole every last one o’ the flowers off’n Sum’s grave. An’ the ribbins.’

“She was fair beside herself, bein’ as the loss hed piled up on a long sickness o’ Sum’s, an’ a big doctor’s bill consequent, an’ she nervous anyhow, an’ a good deal o’ the ribbin tyin’ the stems was silk, both sides.

“‘I’ll hev out the marshal,’ s’she, wild. ’I’ll send for Timothy. They can’t hev got far with ’em. I’ll know,’ s’she, defiant, ’whether they’s anything to the law or whether they ain’t.’

“I hed her take some strong coffee from breakfast, an’ I got her, after some more fumin’s an’ fustin’s, to walk back to the cemetery with me, till we give a look around. I do as many quick-moved things as some, but I allus try, first, to give a look around.

“‘An’ another thing,’ s’I to her, as we set out, ‘are you sure, Mis’ Fire Chief, that you got to the right grave? The first visit, so,’ I says, ‘an’ not bein’ accustomed to bein’ a widow, lately, an’ all, you might ‘a’ got mixed in the lots.’

“While she was disclaimin’ this I looked up an’ see, hangin’ round the road, was Eb. He seemed some sheepish when he see me, an’ he said, hasty, that he’d just got there, an’ it come over me like a flash’t he’d come to see Elspie off. An’ I marched a-past him without hardly a word.

“We wasn’t mor’n out o’ the house when we heard a shout, an’ there come Silas an’ Timothy, tearin’ along full tilt in the store delivery wagon, wavin’ their arms.

“‘It’s Elspie Elspie!’ they yelled, when they was in hearin’. ’She ain’t to the depot. She’ll be left. Where is she?’

“I hadn’t counted on their comin’ before the train left, but I thought I see my way clear. An’ when they come up to us, I spoke to ’em, quiet.

“‘She’s in the house, asleep,’ s’I, ‘an’ what’s more, in that house she’s goin’ to stay as long as she wants. But,’ s’I, without waitin’ for ’em to bu’st out, ’there’s more important business than that afoot for the marshal;’ an’ then I told ’em about Sum Merriman’s flowers. ‘An’,’ s’I, ‘you’d better come an’ see about that now an’ let Eppleby an’ the others take down the inmates, an’ you go after ’em on the 8.05. It ain’t often,’ s’I, crafty, ‘that we get a thief in Friendship.’

“I hed Timothy Toplady there, an’ he knew it. He’s rill sensitive about the small number o’ arrests he’s made in the village in his term. He excited up about it in a minute.

“‘Blisterin’ Benson!’ he says, ’ain’t this what they call vandalism? Look at it right here in our midst like a city!’ says he, fierce an’ showin’ through some gleeful.

“‘Why, sir,’ says Silas Sykes, ’mebbe it’s them human goals. Mebbe they’ve dug Sum up,’ he says, ‘an mebbe ’ But I hushed him up. Silas Sykes always grabs on to his thoughts an’ throws ’em out, dressed or undressed. He ain’t a bit o’ reserve. Not a thought of his head that he don’t part with. If he had hands on his forehead, you could tell what time he is I think you could, anyway.

“Well, it was rill easy to manage ’em, they bein’ men an’ susceptible to fascinations o’ lawin’ it over somethin’. An’ we all got into the delivery wagon, an’ Eb, he come too, sittin’ in back, listenin’ an’ noddin’, his feet hangin’ over the box informal.

“I allus remember how the cemetery looked that mornin’. It was the tag end o’ June an’ in June cemeteries seems like somewheres else. The Sodality hed been tryin’ to get a new iron fence, but they hadn’t made out then, an’ they ain’t made out now an’ the old whitewashed fence an’ the field stone wall was fair pink with wild roses, an’ the mulberry tree was alive with birds, an’ the grass layin’ down with dew, an’ the white gravestones set around, placid an’ quiet, like other kind o’ folks that we don’t know about. Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman, she went right through the wet grass, cross lots an’ round graves, holdin’ up her mournin’ an’ showin’ blue beneath kind o’ secular, like her thinkin’ about the all-silk ribbin at such a time. Sure enough, she knew her way to the lot all right. An’ there was the new grave, all sodered green, an’ not a sprig nor a stitch to honour it.

“‘Now!’ says Mis’ Merriman, rill triumphant.

“‘Land, land!’ s’I, seein’ how it rilly was.

“Timothy an’ Silas, they both pitched in an’ talked at once an’ bent down, technical, lookin’ for tracks. But Eb, he just begun seemin’ peculiar an’ then he slipped off somewheres, though we never missed him, till, in a minute, he come runnin’ back.

“‘Come here!’ he says. ‘Come on over here a little ways,’ he told us, an’ not knowin’ anything better to do we turned an’ went after him, wonderin’ what on the earth was the matter with him an’ ready to believe ’most anything.

“Eb led us past the vault where Obe Toplady, Timothy’s father, lays in a stone box you can see through the grating tiptoe; an’ round by the sample cement coffin that sets where the drives meet for advertisin’ purposes, an’ you go by wonderin’ whose it’ll be, an’ so on over toward the Old Part o’ the cemetery, down the slope of the hill where everybody’s forgot who’s who or where they rest, an’ no names, so. But it’s always blue with violets in May like Somebody remembered, anyhow.

“When we got to the top o’ the hill, we all looked down the slope, shinin’ with dew an’ sunniness, an’ little flowers runnin’ in the grass, thick as thick, till at the foot o’ the hill they fair made a garden, a garden about the size of a grave, knee-deep with flowers. From where we stood we could see ’em hothouse roses an’ straw flowers, an’ set pieces, an’ a lot o’ pillows, an’ ribbins layin’ out on the grass. An’ there, side of ’em, broodin’ over ’em lovin’, set Elspie, that I’d thought was in my house asleep.

“Mis’ Fire Chief, she wasn’t one to hesitate. She was over the hill in a minute, the blue edge o’ petticoat bannerin’ behind.

“‘Up-un my word,’ s’she, like a cut, ’if this ain’t a pretty note. What under the sun are you doin’ sittin’ there, Elspie, with my flowers?’

“Elspie looked up an’ see her, an’ see us streamin’ toward her over the hill.

“‘They ain’t your flowers, are they?’ s’she, quiet. ’They’re the dead’s. I was a-goin’ to take ’em back in a minute or two, anyway, an’ I’ll take ‘em back now.’

“She got up, simple an’ natural, an’ picked up the fruit piece an’ one o’ the pillows, an’ started up the hill.

“‘Well, I nev-er,’ says Mis’ Merriman; ’the very bare brazenness. Ain’t you goin’ to tell me what you’re doin’ here with the flowers you say is the dead’s, an’ I’m sure what was Sum’s is mine an’ the dead’s the same ’

“She begun to cry a little, an’ with that Elspie looks up at her, troubled.

“‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ she says. ’I didn’t mean you should know anything about it. I come early to do it I thought you wouldn’t know.’

“‘Do what?’ says Mis’ Merriman, rill snappish.

“Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An’ when she sees Eb an’ me standin’ together, she give us a little smile an’ she sort o’ answered to us two.

“‘Why,’ she says, ’I ain’t got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive, that belongs. The dead is all other folks’s dead, an’ the livin’ is all other folks’s folks. An’ when I see all the graves down here that they don’t nobody know who’s they are, I thought mebbe one of ’em wouldn’t care if I kind of adopted it.’

“At that she sort o’ searched into Mis’ Merriman’s face, an’ then Elspie’s head went down, like she hed to excuse herself.

“‘I thought,’ she said, ‘they must be so dead an’ no names on ’em an’ all an’ their live folks all dead too by now nobody’d care much. I thought of it yesterday when we was walkin’ down here,’ she said, ‘an’ I picked out the grave it’s the littlest one here. An’ then when we come back past where the funeral was, an’ I see them flowers seemed like I hed to see how ’twould be to put ’em on my grave, that I’d took over. So I come early an’ done it. But I was goin’ to lay ’em right back where they belong I truly was.’

“I guess none of us hed the least i-dea what to say. We just stood there plain tuckered in the part of us that senses things. All, that is, but one of us. An’ that one was Eb Goodnight.

“I can see Eb now, how he just walked out o’ the line of us standin’ there, starin’, an’ he goes right up to Elspie an’ he looks her in the face.

“‘You’re lonesome,’ s’he, kind o’ wonderin’. ’You’re lonesome. Like other folks.’

“An’ all to once Eb took a-hold o’ her elbow not loose an’ temporary like he shook hands, but firm an’ four-cornered; an’ when he spoke it was like his voice hed been starched an’ ironed.

“‘Mis’ Fire Chief,’ s’he, lookin’ round at her, ’I’s to let you know this week whether I’d take over the store. Well, yes,’ he says, ’if you’ll give me the time on it we mentioned, I’ll take it over. An’ if Elspie’ll marry me an’ let me belong to her, an’ her to me.’

“‘Marry you?’ says Elspie, understandin’ how he’d rilly spoke to her. ‘Me?’

“Eb straightened himself up, an’ his eyes was bright an’ keen as the edge o’ somethin’.

“‘Yes, you,’ he says gentle. ‘An’ me.’

“An’ then she looked at him like he was lookin’ at her. An’ it come to me how it’d been with them two since the night they’d locked up my house together. An’ I felt all hushed up, like the weddin’ was beginnin’.

“But Timothy an’ Silas, they wa’n’t feelin’ so hushed.

‘Look a-here!’ says Timothy Toplady, all pent up. ’She ain’t discharged from the county house yet.’

“‘I don’t care a dum,’ says Eb, an’ I must say I respected him for the ’dum’ that once.

“‘Look a-here,’ says Silas, without a bit o’ delicacy. ’She ain’t responsible. She ain’t ’

“‘She is too,’ Eb cut him short. ’She’s just as responsible as anybody can be when they’re lonesome enough to die. I ought ‘a’ know that. Shut up, Silas Sykes,’ says Eb, all het up. ’You’ve just et a hot breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’

“An’ then Eb sort o’ swep’ us all up in the dust-pan.

“‘No more words about it,’ s’he, ‘an’ I don’t care what any one o’ you says Mis’ Cally nor none o’ you. So you might just as well say less. Tell ’em, Elspie!’

“She looked up at him, smilin’ a little, an’ he turned toward her, like we wasn’t there. An’ I nudged Mis’ Merriman an’ made a move, an’ she turns right away, like she’d fair forgot the funeral flowers. An’ Timothy an’ Silas actually followed us, but talkin’ away a good deal like men will.

“None of us looked back from the top o’ the hill, though I will own I would ‘a’ loved to. An’ about up there I heard Silas say:

“‘Oh, well. I am gettin’ kind o’ old an’ some stiff to take a new business on myself.’

“An’ Timothy, he adds absent: ’I don’t s’pose, when you come right down to it, as Alice County’ll rilly care a whoop.’

“An’ Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an’, ’It does seem like courtin’ with Sum’s flowers,’ she says, sighin’, ’but I’m rill glad for Eb.’

“An’ Eb not bein’ there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin’ at the mornin’ sun on the cemetery an’ thinkin’ o’ them two back there among the baskets an’ set pieces I says, low to myself:

“‘Oh, glory, glory, glory.’

“For I tell you, when you see a livin’ soul born in somebody’s eyes, it makes you feel pretty sure you can hev one o’ your own, if you try.”