A space more liberal than the operation strictly needed was cleared for me on the polished deal table; a penny ink-bottle and a pen with a rusty but still useful nib set upon it, and from a special drawer, with a solemnity that of the character of sacred ritual, Mrs. Watt, as Bill's grandmother informed me she was called, drew forth a single sheet of notepaper. Its dimensions had been heavily curtailed by the deepest border of mourning black that I ever had seen on English writing-paper. Other nations surpass us in this evidence of respect, but Mrs. Watt's paper was calculated to raise the national standard. "Isn't this," I said, "rather--I mean is it quite suited for a birthday letter, to cheer up Frank in the trenches?" Mrs. Watt took the suggestion in quite good part, but gave it a decided negative. "'E would wish respect showed to 'is Aunt Maria, as died Wednesday was a fortnight. You might tell 'im that, if you please, Mum." I started off, as bidden, with this mournful communication, under the eye, at first severely critical, then frankly admiring, of Bill's grandmother. "Lor," she exclaimed, "you be one to write the words quick!" "What shall we say now?" I asked brightly. "Wednesday was a fortnight as she died, sister Maria did, that's Frank's aunt, and was buried a Saturday--what's too soon, as you'd say, but no disrespect meant, the undertaker arranging first for the Monday--only 'aving a bigger job, with 'orses and plumes, give'im for the Monday, and so putting my pore sister forward to the Saturday. 'Ave you got that down, Mum?" "Oh," I said, scribbling briskly, "am I to write all that?" It occupied, even with much compression, space far into the second side of the restricted paper. "An' my only relative surviving," she resumed, "being brother George, as is eighty-two, and crotchety at that, lives out 'Oxton way, so I wrote to him about the funeral for a Monday, and when the undertaker puts it forward to the Saturday I didn't have no one to send all that way, so brother George--'e's eighty-two, and crotchety at that--'e didn't get no notice for the funeral on Saturday at all, so o' course 'e didn't come. You'll make all that clear to Frank, won't you, Mum?" I scribbled hard again, and said I was doing my best. "So brother George being crotchety, as I said, Mum, 'e sent me word as 'e wouldn't never speak to me again in this world, and 'e didn't know as ever 'e would in the world to come--I'd like you to put that all in, please, Mum, so's to let Frank know 'ow it all is. Now, do you suppose, Mum, if I was to die, as brother George'd come to my funeral?" I hardly knew what answer to make after the "cut everlasting" with which George had threatened his sister, but I had an idea that I was beginning to understand Mrs. Watt's tastes. "Well," I said weakly, "I don't know--funerals are very pleasant things."