Besides, I says to myself, "so long as Hank has
turned into a corpse and that makes him dead,
what's the difference whether he's in the black-
smith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't had any plain idea,
being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead,
and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither,
except they had funerals over you then. I knowed
being a corpse must be some sort of a big disad-
vantage from the way Elmira always says keep
away from that cistern door or I'll be one. But
if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd
feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em
every day in our town, and we hadn't never had
one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house,
both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort
her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto
Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a
few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told
come filing into that room, one at a time, looking
sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
getting there because she stopped to put on her
bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black
Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent
her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with
licker in him and done it himself, they was all
excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands
which sets moaning in a chair.
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