The interruption seemed a welcome one to everybody, for there was a general movement on both sides of Mr. Bunce, which he, with his sentence unfinished, was constrained to join. The third stranger, a small, elderly man with a mobile countenance and rusty black clothes, drew himself up, put on a modifiedly doleful expression, and, speaking for the first time, assumed control of everything: “Naow, Milton, you ’n’ Leander git the table aout, ’n’ bring in all the extry chairs, ’n’ set ’em ’raound in rows. Squeeze ’em pooty well together in back, but the front ones kind o’ spread aout. You, Miss Sabriny, ’n’ the lady”--indicating Isabel with his thumb--“’n’ Annie’d better go upstairs ’n’ git yer bonnets on, ’n’ things, ’n’ go ’n’ set in the room at the head o’ the stairs. You men, tew, git your gloves on, ’n’ naow be sure ’n’ have your hankch’fs in some pocket where you can git at ’em with your gloves on--’n’ have your hats in your hands, ‘n’ then go ’n’ set with the ladies. Miss Sabriny, you’ll come daown arm-in-arm with yer brother, _when_ I call, ’n’ then Albert ’n’ his wife, ’n’ John with Annie, ’n’ Seth with--pshaw, there’s odd numbers. Well, Seth can come alone. And dew keep step comin’ daown stairs!” “’N’ naow, gents,” turning to the Rev. Mr. Turner, “your gaown’s in the fust room to the right on the landin’, and if you”--addressing Mr. Bunce--“will go up with him, and arrange ’baout the services, so’s to come daown together--it’ll look pootier than to straggle in by yourselves,--’n’ you, Milton, ain’t you got somethin’ besides overalls to put on?” Thus the autocrat cleared the living room. Then, going around through the front hall, he entered the parlor to receive, with solemn dignity and a fine eye to their relative social merit, the first comers. These were almost exclusively women, dressed in Sunday garb. As each buggy or democrat wagon drove up inside the gate, and discharged its burden, the men would lead the horses further on, to be hitched under or near the shed, and then saunter around to the kitchen side of the house, where cider was on tap, and other men were standing in the sunshine, chewing tobacco and conversing in low tones, while the women from each conveyance went straight to the front door, and got seats in the parlor as close to the coffin as possible. The separation of the sexes could hardly have been more rigorous in a synagogue. There were, indeed two or three meek, well-brushed men among the women, sitting, uncomfortable but resigned, in the geranium-scented gloom of the curtained parlor, but, as the more virile brethren outside would have said, they were men who didn’t count.