Belinda's blue, weeping eyes surveyed her with the helpless
bewilderment of a baby. "Why, Ann," she gasped, "there won't be
any--remains!"

"What of that? I guess I know it."

"There won't be nothin' for anybody to go round an' look at; there
won't be any coffin--Ann, you ain't goin' to have any coffin when he
ain't found, be you?"

"Be you a fool, Belindy Lamb?" said Ann. A hard sniff came from
Paulina Maria.

"Well, I didn't s'pose you was," said Belinda, with meek abashedness.
"Of course I knew you wasn't--I only asked; but I don't see how you
can have a funeral no way, Ann. There won't be any coffin, nor any
hearse, nor any procession, nor--"

"There'll be mourners," broke in Ann.

"They're what makes a funeral," said Paulina Maria, putting on an
apron she had brought. "Folks that's had funerals knows."

She cast an austere glance at Belinda Lamb, who colored to the roots
of her fair curls, and was conscious of a guilty lack of funeral
experience, while Paulina Maria had lost seven children, who all died
in infancy. Poor Belinda seemed to see the other woman's sternly
melancholy face in a halo of little coffins and funeral wreaths.

"I know you've had a good deal more to contend with than I have," she