When she discovered that her premonitions were correct, and old Mrs.
Butterfield was indeed dead, her grief at losing a pleasant
acquaintance was largely mitigated by her sense of importance at
being first on the spot, and chosen by Providence to take command of
the situation. There were no relations in the village; there was no
woman neighbour within a mile: it was therefore her obvious
Christian duty not only to take charge of the "remains," but to
conduct such a funeral as the remains would have wished for herself.

The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny to guide
the ship of state, the soldier who sees a possible Victoria Cross in
a hazardous engagement, can have a faint conception of Aunt Hitty's
feeling on this momentous occasion. Funerals were the very breath of
her life. There was no ceremony, either of public or private import,
that, to her mind, approached a funeral in real satisfying interest.
Yet, with distinct talent in this direction, she had always been
"cabined, cribbed, confined" within hopeless limitations. She had
assisted in a secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other
people, but she would have revelled in personally conducted ones.
The members of her own family stubbornly refused to die, however,
even the distant connections living on and on to a ridiculous old
age; and if they ever did die, by reason of a falling roof,
shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or
some remote State where Aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the
first carriage. This blighted ambition was a heart-sorrow of so deep
and sacred a character that she did not even confess it to "Si," as
her appendage of a husband was called.

Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs.