With one of those sudden changes that come in Virginia, the day of Nathan's funeral brought a foretaste of spring. The snow had melted so rapidly that the roads were flowing like brooks, and Whippernock River, with its damaged bridge, was still impassable. But an April languor was in the air, and the sky over the wintry fields was as soft as clouds of blue and white hyacinths. Though a number of farmers who lived beyond Whippernock River had been unable to come to the funeral, people had arrived by train from the city and in every vehicle that could roll on wheels from the near side of the railroad. The little church was crowded to suffocation while the minister read his short text and preached his long sermon on the beauty of self-sacrifice. When the last hymn was sung with gasps of emotional tension, and the congregation flocked out into the churchyard, with Nathan in his flower-banked coffin and Dorinda hidden in her widow's weeds, a wave of grief spread like a contagious affliction over the throng. With her head reverently bowed, Dorinda tried to attend only to the words of the minister, to see only the open grave at her feet, with the piles of red clay surrounding the oblong hole. Yet her senses, according to their deplorable habit in a crisis, became extraordinarily alive, and every trivial detail of the scene glittered within her mind. She saw the blanched and harrowed face of the minister, who prayed with closed eyes and violent gestures as if he were wrestling with God; she saw the nodding black plumes of Miss Texanna Snead, and remembered that Nathan had once called her "a plumed hearse." She saw the gaping mouths of the children, whom their mothers, in the excitement of the occasion, had neglected to wash; she saw even the predatory brood of chickens which had invaded the graveyard and was scratching upon the graves. The ground at her feet was heaped with flowers, and among the floral crosses and wreaths and pillows, she observed the design of a railway engine made of red and white carnations, and tried to recall the names on the card. Long after she had forgotten every word of the prayer, she could still see that preposterous floral engine and smell the strong scent of fading carnations. Standing there beside the open grave, recollections blew in and out of her mind like chaff in the wind. Her first sermon. The old minister praying with eyes so tightly shut that they looked like slits made by a penknife. The way her feet could not reach the floor. Peppermints in a paper bag to keep her quiet. Her mother smelling of soap and camphor. Missionaries in the front pew. The saving of black babies. The way she had yawned and stretched. Nathan was there then, a big boy who sang, with a voice as shrill as a grasshopper, in the choir. Rose Emily too. How pretty she was. Then Rose Emily as she lay dying with the happy light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. Twenty-two years ago! Well, she had done her best by Rose Emily's children.