She took him to see his grandfather after the laying-out, turned back the ghastly sheet, which was stretched between two chairs, removed cloths from the dead man’s face, and warned the boy to prepare for death. He never afterwards inhaled the pungent odor of camphor without turning faint. At table he and his mother huddled together, feeling scarcely welcome to the abundant food. Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife, with a number of helpers, kept the table burdened with every country luxury, but Aunt Lindy saw that the best was reserved until the great final dinner on the day of the funeral. That day was considered a credit to Moses Jeffries. It was one of the largest funerals ever known in those parts. The weather was pleasant, and summer work so well advanced that everybody could feel the pressure of neighborly duty. Carriages and fine horses nearly filled the orchard space in front of the house; the yard was darkened with standing men in their best black clothes. Not half the people could get into the house, to say nothing of getting into the parlor. There Elder McGafferty lifted his hands, praying and preaching over the old farmer, who looked so unused to his collar and neck-cloth and brand-new suit when they took off his coffin-lid. A number of men wandered down by the barn; the hymn-singing came to them faint and plaintive, in gusts of couplets, just as the preacher lined the words. One of them remarked that old Mr. Jeffr’s left things in pretty good shape, and he s’posed Hod Miller wouldn’t alter them much. Another thought that Serene Heddin’ would come in for a sheer, if not all. A man may be put out with his children, but he’ll favor them when it comes to such serious business as makin’ a will. Hod Miller had bought and sold and made money on that farm, enough to pay for his work. He oughtn’t to stand in Sereny’s light. “What’s she been doin’ since her man died?” inquired the first speaker, shaving off long whittlings from a piece of pine. “Workin’ out, ’pears like I heard. She got a place near Lancaster, where they’d let her keep her boy with her. It’s my opinion,” said the second speaker, suddenly spitting a flood, and letting his spiky chin work up and down with slow rumination, “that old Lindy kept her away from her pap as long as she could, for fear there’d be a makin’ up.” “Oh, sho! The old man was very set in his ways. He didn’t need bully-raggin’ to make up his mind and keep it made up. Hod Miller might marry the widder now, and that’d settle all claims.” “I don’t believe she’d have him,” said the chewer, smiling slowly. “Jesse Jeffr’s, he thinks Sereny’s all right. He claims he seen the will.”