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The Seeker by Harry Leon Wilson
page 81 of 334 (24%)

He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had urged Miss Alvira to
divorce her husband, that she had refused, declaring God had joined her to
Cousin Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that marriage had
been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament and was now
indissoluble--an emblem, indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and
that, as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it.

Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct manifestation of Providence
the sudden removal of Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia.
For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected even by those who
considered that she sang alto half a note off, while her husband had
gradually acquired the disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom.
Many, indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his sex.

Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended observance of the
decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them,
however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the
post-office next day, "It was _her_ funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no
pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to
the world. She rode to the last resting-place of her husband--Elias also
made a funny joke about his having merely changed _resting-places_--decked
in a bonnet on which were many blossoms. She had worn it through years
when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it seemed that God from
His infinity had chosen her to suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may
know--and now that He had set her free she was not the one to pretend
grief with some lying pall of crêpe. And on the new bonnet she wore to
church, the first Sabbath after, there still flowered above her somewhat
drawn face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were rooted in
her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she sang her alto--such as it
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