The two old women began screeching at each other when they were yet a great way off, and waving their palmetto fans. “Toni, he’s very sick! They say that this is the end!” They found a nice spot by the roadside, among the weeds and overgrown summer flowers. It took them a minute or two to get settled. How Josephine grunted and took on, trying to sit! How her hips spread all over the place! Well, Henriette was glad she was thin and could get about some.... Butter-and-eggs and Jimson weed grew all around them, giving off rank summer odours. A giant cottonwood reached its arms between them and the sun.... “Is you heard from Toni yet?” Henriette asked, all a-tremble. And Josephine said, “No. Is you?” Just so, when they were young, they had sat and talked of Toni. “Is you heard from Toni yet?” What a boy he had been for love!... Love? Death, the enchantress, was after him now. “If _I_ get him,” Henriette cackled, “I’ll have two more than you.” And Josephine laughed, sitting fat in the weeds till their purple juice squashed on her clothes. “_Mais non!_ And if _I_ get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.” A week went by, and another; and it began to look as if old Toni didn’t mean to die after all. It was just like Toni to keep death waiting, to flirt with death like that. He always was a tease: “_Well, my beauty, my proud one--all in good time. Don’t chafe and paw at the bit...._” And not a word had Toni said about getting a wailing woman! That was just like Toni, too, keeping everyone guessing up to the last. Every night now Henriette got out her funeral book: ninety-nine crosses for herself. A record any singing woman might be proud of! If only she could get one more, to round out her final five! If only she could get Toni. How she would crow over Josephine then: “Me, I got one hundred crosses. One hundred funerals I’ve sung for....” One night in early September Henriette, sleepless, lay in her bed. Against her window the trees, uneasy with autumn, pushed and drew away, sighing a little. The moon was up, looking drunken and sodden. It was very warm--good funeral weather, Henriette thought; a fine night for death, with cape jessamine still in bloom and baby owls in the trees. Henriette loved hoot owls. She felt they were kin to her, sisters under the skin. They plied the same trade, she and they. She loved owls and bats and all webfooted creatures, things that live in a green underworld. There were sounds on the highway, the chugging of cars; and into her window flashed the light from an automobile; it sought out the Virgin Mary, wheeled through the room, and was gone. Up and down the roads they went, the automobiles full of young folks--clatter-chug, clatter-chug!--past the unnoticed glory of river and moon and swamp. How little they considered death, the boys and girls on the highway!