Miss Eelen came over to Drumcarro for the funeral, but not with the intention of following the mournful procession to the grave. This was a thing which was contrary to all Scotch customs--a thing unheard of. The men attired in their “blacks,” with deep white “weepers” on their cuffs, and great hat-bands with flowing ends of crape, formed a long line marching two and two, with pauses now and then to change the bearers along the mournful wintry road. The women sat within, keeping together in one room, and firing off little minute guns in the way of mournful remarks, as they sat solemnly doing nothing, not even looking out to see the object of this lugubrious ceremony carried away to her last rest. Miss Eelen bore the part of a kind of mistress of the ceremonies on this sad occasion. She sat in her weepers and her crape, which was not new like the others’ but kept for such occasions, in the high chair which had been Mrs. Douglas’s, with a white handkerchief in her hand, and said at intervals, “Poor Christina--she was a fine creature. Your mother, my dears, was a real, right-thinking woman. She was from the south, and ignorant of some of our ways, but her meaning was always good. She was very fond of her family, poor body. All those laddies--and not one of them to help to lay her head in the grave, except the two little ones, poor things.” Kirsteen stood leaning against the window watching through the shutters the mournful black line as it moved away, while Jeanie at her feet, holding by her dress, followed vicariously through her sister’s eyes the progress of the procession. They heard the tramp, recognisable among the others, of the bearers, as they straightened themselves under their burden, and then the sound of the slow, irregular march. “Can ye see it, Kirsteen? Is it away? Is that it passing? Oh, my mother, my mother!” cried Jeanie. She held fast by Kirsteen’s dress, as if there was strength and support in it; and Kirsteen stooped and raised her up when the sound of the measured tramp had died away. “Now,” she said, “all is gone--the very last. And the time is come when we must begin our common lives again.” “She was indeed a fine creature,” said Miss Eelen with a little flourish of her handkerchief. “I mind when she came first here, a delicate bit thing, that never looked as if she would live.” “She was always delicate,” said Mary taking up the response. “And think of all the bairns she had--a fine stirring family.” “Fourteen of us,” said Mary. “Eleven living, and all a credit--that is to say--but I name no names,” said Miss Eelen. “It is perhaps better not,” said Mary. Kirsteen whispered in her little sister’s ear that she could bear this no longer, and taking Jeanie’s hand rose to leave the room. She was stopped by Mary’s reproving voice--“Where are ye taking Jeanie, Kirsteen? Ye are not going out on the day of my mother’s funeral?”