The sheets and hangings smelled
faintly of lavender, the walls were papered with landscapes in which
pretty shepherdesses, impossible sheep, and garlands of roses
predominated,--a style much in vogue in the early forties,--indeed the
room seemed as if it had been closed and laid away by a tidy housewife
years before, and opened and aired for my reception but yesterday. An
illumined text,--a "Jonah under his Gourd," elaborately worked in
colored silks,--a smirking likeness of "The Father of his Country," and
an equally self-satisfied looking portrait of Mrs. W. hung in prominent
places.
There was a gentle tap on the door, and an ancient darky entered, with a
tall glass of whipped-cream punch, light as a feather, and as delicate
as thought. Then, breakfast, in a long, low-ceilinged room on the ground
floor, with a blazing fire at each end, a pickaninny gravely watchful
over both. Only the male members of the family were at the meal, which
was a solemn festival as befitting a house of mourning.
At ten o'clock the funeral procession left the mansion and slowly wound
its way along a rough road to a little weather-beaten church a mile or
so distant. It was set well back from the highway in the shadow of tall
pines, and looked lonely and uncared-for. In the churchyard were a few
scattered tombstones, moss-grown, and very much awry.
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