But the little old man with a bag on his back was left out in the
dusk, and aunt Corinne and her party went into the tavern parlor. The
landlady brought a pair of candles in brass candlesticks, setting one
on each end of the mantel. Between them were snuffers on a snuffer-tray,
and a tall mass of paper roses under a glass case. The fireplace
was covered by a fireboard on which was pasted wallpaper like that
adorning the room. Grandma Padgett sat down in a rocking settee, and
Corinne and Bobaday on two of the chairs ranged in solemn rows along
the wall. They felt it would be presumption to pull those chairs an
inch out of line.

It was a very depressing room. Two funeral urns hung side by side,
done in India ink, and framed in chipped-off mahogany. Weeping
willows hung over the urns, and a weeping woman leaned on each. There
was also a picture of Napoleon in scarlet standing on the green rock
of St. Helena, holding a yellow three-cornered hat under his elbow.
The house had a fried-potato odor, to which aunt Corinne did not
object. She was hungry. But, besides this, the parlor enclosed a
dozen other scents; as if the essences of all the dinners served in
the house were sitting around invisible on the chairs. There was not
lacking even that stale cupboard smell which is the spirit of hunger
itself.

The landlady was very fat and red and also melancholy. She began
talking at once to Grandma Padgett about the loss of her children
whom the funeral urns commemorated, and Grandma Padgett sympathized
with her and tried to outdo her in sorrowful experiences. But this
was impossible; for the landlady had-lived through more ordeals than
anybody else in town, and her manner said plainly, that no passing
stranger should carry off her championship.