The coroner was making notes of his own, stroking his black beard thoughtfully, and in the pause between witnesses the assembled neighbors had the pleasure of inspecting the parlor of dead Isom Chase which they had invaded, into which, living, he never had invited them.
Isom's first wife had arranged that room, in the hope of her young heart, years and years ago. Its walls were papered in bridal gaiety, its colors still bright, for the full light of day seldom fell into it as now. There hung a picture of that bride's father, a man with shaved lip and a forest of beard from ears to Adam's apple, in a little oval frame; and there, across the room, was another, of her mother, Quakerish in look, with smooth hair and a white something on her neck and bosom, held at her throat by a portrait brooch. On the table, just under that fast-writing young man's eyes, was a glass thing shaped like a cake cover, protecting some flowers made of human hair, and sprigs of bachelor's button, faded now, and losing their petals.
There hung the marriage certificate of Isom and his first wife, framed in tarnished gilt which was flaking from the wood, a blue ribbon through a slit in one corner of the document, like the pendant of a seal, and there stood the horsehair-upholstered chairs, so spare of back and thin of shank that the rustics would stand rather than trust their corn-fed weight upon them. Underfoot was a store-bought carpet, as full of roses as the Elysian Fields, and over by the door lay a round, braided rag mat, into which Isom's old wife had stitched the hunger of her heart and the brine of her lonely tears.
The coroner looked up from his little red-leather note-book.
"Joe Newbolt, step over here and be sworn," said he.
Joe crossed over to the witness-chair, picking his way through feet and legs. As he turned, facing the coroner, his hand upraised, Ollie looked at him steadily, her fingers fluttering and twining.
Twelve hours had made a woeful change in her. She was as gaunt as a suckling she-hound, an old terror lay lurking in her young eyes. For one hour of dread is worse than a year of weeping. One may grieve, honestly and deeply, without wearing away the cheeks or burning out the heart, for there is a soft sorrow which lies upon the soul like a deadening mist upon the autumn fields. But there is no worry without waste. One day of it will burn more of the fuel of human life than a decade of placid sorrow.