"Mercy me!" muttered Miss Lambkin. "I didn't have my kid gloves on. I ought to have known better'n to speak to Patty without 'em. You may as well come back, Alicia," she continued in a louder voice, "and finish with that skirt. Perhaps, now, you'll be wanting a new black dress. Your old one's pretty well out of fashion." She filled her mouth with pins while Mrs. Upjohn again mounted the table. Mrs. Upjohn shook her head slowly. "No," she answered, "I guess the old one will do for a while yet. I shouldn't want one for anything but the funeral anyway, and you couldn't begin to get one done by that time. It would be different if it was a relative." "It's curious," remarked Miss Lambkin, as well as she could with her mouth full of pins, "how things go. Now, there's many of our relatives--mine, anyway--that we could spare as well as not; better than some of those that are no kin to us. And we have to wear black for them and try to look sorry. Black isn't becoming to some, but it seems to me you'd look full as well in it as you do in that lavender, and that place on your shoulder where Patty cried tears is going to show anyway. But, as I was going to say, a man like John Hazen is going to be missed. I wonder who was there, at his death-bed. Patty, of course, and Sally Ladue, I s'pose, and maybe Mrs. Ladue and Meriwether Beatty. Sally was real fond of her Uncle John and he of her. It's my opinion that Sally'll be sorrier than Patty will. Come right down to it, Patty isn't so broken-hearted as she likes to think, though she'll miss him." To this Mrs. Upjohn agreed, but Letty did not wait for her reply. "And I wonder," she went on, working rapidly while she talked, "how much he's left. Patty hasn't said, I s'pose. I don't s'pose she'd have much of an idea anyway, and I don't know's anybody could tell until his business is all settled up. He had quite a number of vessels, and it seems a great pity that there isn't anybody to take his business up where he left it. He did well with it, I'm told. It's my guess that you'll find that John Hazen's left Sally a good big slice." "I hope so, with all my heart." Mrs. Upjohn spoke cordially, as she did invariably of Sally. "My!" Letty exclaimed with an anticipatory squeal of delight. "Wouldn't it put Patty in a proper temper if he had! Now, Alicia," she said, standing back and looking the skirt up and down, "we'll call that skirt right. It hangs well, if I do say it. Take it off and I'll finish it right up. You can come down now." CHAPTER VII