widow brought her boys to stand there one felt kindly towards her. Hats
were raised higher than usual; wives tugged their husbands' arms.
Seabrook lay six foot beneath, dead these many years; enclosed in three
shells; the crevices sealed with lead, so that, had earth and wood been
glass, doubtless his very face lay visible beneath, the face of a young
man whiskered, shapely, who had gone out duck-shooting and refused to
change his boots.

"Merchant of this city," the tombstone said; though why Betty Flanders
had chosen so to call him when, as many still remembered, he had only
sat behind an office window for three months, and before that had broken
horses, ridden to hounds, farmed a few fields, and run a little wild--
well, she had to call him something. An example for the boys.

Had he, then, been nothing? An unanswerable question, since even if it
weren't the habit of the undertaker to close the eyes, the light so soon
goes out of them. At first, part of herself; now one of a company, he
had merged in the grass, the sloping hillside, the thousand white
stones, some slanting, others upright, the decayed wreaths, the crosses
of green tin, the narrow yellow paths, and the lilacs that drooped in
April, with a scent like that of an invalid's bedroom, over the
churchyard wall. Seabrook was now all that; and when, with her skirt
hitched up, feeding the chickens, she heard the bell for service or
funeral, that was Seabrook's voice--the voice of the dead.

The rooster had been known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so
that now she carried a stick or took one of the children with her when
she went to feed the fowls.

"Wouldn't you like my knife, mother?" said Archer.