She had
assisted in a secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other
people, but she would have revelled in personally conducted ones.
The members of her own family stubbornly refused to die, however,
even the distant connections living on and on to a ridiculous old
age; and if they ever did die, by reason of a falling roof,
shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or
some remote State where Aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the
first carriage. This blighted ambition was a heart-sorrow of so deep
and sacred a character that she did not even confess it to "Si," as
her appendage of a husband was called.
Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs.
Butterfield had no kith or kin save her niece, Lyddy Ann, who lived
in Andover, or Lawrence, or Haverhill, Massachusetts--Aunt Hitty
couldn't remember which, and hoped nobody else could. The niece
would be sent for when they found out where she lived; meanwhile the
funeral could not be put off.
She glanced round the house preparatory to locking it up and starting
to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him
about ordering the coffin; then she could attend to all other
necessary preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do,
and there was no occasion for sordid economy, so Aunt Hitty
determined in her own mind to have the latest fashion in everything,
including a silver coffin-plate. The Butterfield coffin-plates were
a thing to be proud of.
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