The sun was flooding the big living-room when Mary-Clare, Noreen, and Jan-an sat down to the meal Jan-an had prepared. There was a feeling of safety prevailing at last. And then Jan-an, her elbows on the table, her face resting in her cupped hands, remarked slowly as if repeating a lesson:
"He's dead, Philander Sniff. Went terrible sudden after taking all this time. I clean forgot--letters and doings. I can't think of more than one thing at a time."
Mary-Clare set her cup down sharply while Noreen with one of those whimsical turns of hers drawled in a sing-song:
"Old Philander Sniff, he died just like a whiff----"
"Noreen!" Mary-Clare stared at the child while Jan-an chuckled in a rough, loose way as if her laugh were small stones rattling in her throat.
"Well, Motherly, Philander was a cruel old man. Just being dead don't make him anything different but--dead."
"Noreen, you must keep quiet. Jan-an, tell me about it."
Mary-Clare's voice commanded the situation. Jan-an's stony gurgle ceased and she began relating what she had come to tell.
"I took his supper over to him, same as usual, and set it down on the back steps, and when he opened the door I said, like I allas done, 'Peneluna says good-night,' and he took in the food and slammed the door, same as usual."
"Old Philander Sniff----" began Noreen's chant as she slipped from her chair intent upon a doll by the hearthside.
Mary-Clare took no notice of her but nodded to Jan-an.
"And then," the girl went on, "I went in to Peneluna and told her and then we et and went to bed. Long about midnight, I guess, there was a yell!" Jan-an lost her breath and paused, then rushed along: "He'd raised his winder and after all the keeping still, he called for Peneluna to come."
Mary-Clare visualized the dramatic scene that poor Jan-an was mumbling monotonously.
"And she went! I just lay there scared stiff hearing things an' seeing 'em! Come morning, in walked Peneluna looking still and high and she didn't say nothing till she'd gone and fetched those togs of hers, black 'uns, you know, that Aunt Polly gave her long back. She put 'em on, bonnet and veil an' everything. Then she took an old red rose out of a box and pinned it on the front of her bonnet--God! but she did look skeery--and then said to me awful careful, 'Trot on to Mary-Clare, tell her to fotch the marriage service _and_ the funeral one, both!' Jes' like that she said it. Both!"