The task of the undertaker was neither light nor altogether smooth. There were some dozen chairs reserved, nearest the pall, for the mourners, the clergymen and the mixed quartette expected from Thessaly. Every woman on entering made for these chairs, and the more unimportant and “low-down” she was in the rural scale of social values, the more confidently she essayed to get one of them. With all of these more or less argument was necessary--conducted in a buzzing whisper from which some squeak or guttural exclamation would now and again emerge. With some, the undertaker was compelled to be quite peremptory; while one woman--Susan Jane Squires, a slatternly, weak-eyed creature who presumed upon her position as sister-in-law of Milton, the hired man--had actually to be pushed away by sheer force. Then there was the further labor of inducing all these disappointed ones to take the seats furthest back, so that late comers might not have to push by and over them, but efforts in this direction were only fitful at the best, and soon were practically abandoned. “Fust come, fust sarved!” said old Mrs. Wimple. “I’m jes ez good ez them that’ll come bimeby, ’n’ ef I don’ mind their climbin’ over me, _you_ needn’t!” and against this the undertaker could urge nothing satisfactory. In the intervals of that functionary’s activity, conversation was quite general, carried on in whispers which, in the aggregate, sounded like the rustle of a smart breeze through the dry leaves of a beach tree. Many women were there who had never been in the house before--could indeed, have had no other chance of getting in. These had some fleeting interest in the funeral appointments, and the expense incident thereto, but their chief concern was the furnishing of the house. They furtively scraped the carpet with their feet to test its quality, they felt of the furniture to see if it had been re-varnished, they estimated the value of the curtains, speculated on the cost of the melodeon and its age, wondered when the ceiling had last been whitewashed. Some, who knew the family better, discussed the lamentable decline of the Fairchilds in substance and standing within their recollection, and exchanged hints about the endemic mortgage stretching its sinister hand even to the very chairs they were sitting on. Others, still more intimate, rehearsed the details of the last and fatal illness, commented on the character of individuals in the family, and guessed how long old Lemuel would last, now that Cicely was gone. In the centre of these circling waves of gossip lay the embodiment of the eternal silence. Listening, one might fain envy such an end to that living death of mental starvation which was the lot of all there, and which forced them, out of their womanhood, to chatter in the presence of death.