That same afternoon, about four o'clock, I observed that every window
in the next house stood wide open. My landlady was out in the
garden, "picking in" her week's washing from the thorn hedge where it
had been suspended to dry; and I called her attention to this new
freak of our neighbours.
"Ah, then, the poor soul must be nigh to her end," said she.
"That's done to give her an easy death."
The woman died at half-past seven. And next morning her husband hung
a scrap of black crape to each of the bee-hives.
She was buried on Sunday afternoon. From behind the drawn blinds of
my sitting-room window I saw the funeral leave the house and move
down the front garden to the high-road--the heads of the mourners,
each with a white handkerchief pressed to its nose, appearing above
the wall like the top of a procession in some Assyrian sculpture.
The husband wore a ridiculously tall hat, and a hat-band with long
tails. The whole affair had the appearance of an hysterical outrage
on the afternoon sunshine. At the foot of the garden they struck up
a "burying tune," and passed down the road, shouting it with all
their lungs.
I caught up a book and rushed out into the back garden for fresh air.
Even out of doors it was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myself
down on the bench within the arbour and set myself to read. A plank
behind me had started, and after a while the edge of it began to gall
my shoulders as I leant back.
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