went away--drives laid out, and paths cut through, and everything. A good
many have put up family tombs, and they've taken away the old iron fences
round the lots, and put granite curbing. They mow the grass all the time.
It's a perfect garden." Mrs. Putney was a small woman, already beginning
to wrinkle. She had married a man whom Annie remembered as a mischievous
little boy, with a sharp tongue and a nervous temperament; her father had
always liked him when he came about the house, but Annie had lost sight of
him in the years that make small boys and girls large ones, and he was at
college when she went abroad. She had an impression of something unhappy in
her friend's marriage.

"I think it's _too_ much fixed up myself," said Mrs. Gerrish. She
turned suddenly to Annie: "You going to have your father fetched home?"

The other ladies started a little at the question and looked at Annie; it
was not that they were shocked, but they wanted to see whether she would
not be so.

"No," she said briefly. She added, helplessly, "It wasn't his wish."

"I should have thought he would have liked to be buried alongside of your
mother," said Mrs. Gerrish. "But the Judge always _was_ a little
peculiar. I presume you can have the name and the date put on the monument
just the same."

Annie flushed at this intimate comment and suggestion from a woman whom as
a girl she had never admitted to familiarity with her, but had tolerated
her because she was such a harmless simpleton, and hung upon other girls
whom she liked better. The word monument cowed her, however. She was afraid
they might begin to talk about the soldiers' monument. She answered