Then Robert Hearth, the undertaker, arrived, and from that second till the coffin sank in the January earth, the two Roberts took charge of everything. They were so much alike: equally solemn, equally efficient in the superb accomplishment of utterly childish ends, equally sure that it must be a comfort to Dr. Kenneth in the coffin to have a little, clean soft pillow under his head.

And equally certain that Neil had killed him.

* * * * *

The once lean and hearty face of his father at the funeral had been painted to a horrible semblance of a waxwork pretty-boy. Neil edgily wondered if the dainty padding of the coffin, displayed through the open trapdoor at the top, thriftily stopped there, and he hated the whole sparkling business of death without annoyance to friends & family; hated the two whispering Roberts, whose stately manner said, “Grieve not—see how bravely we take it—costs surprisingly low—24 hr. service.”

They both managed to make Neil feel like a stranger, here in his father’s house.

His mother was only a wisp of fog, she was quiet, she did not sob, she would not take advantage of her one great day and show off. She humbly did whatever the two Roberts told her. They were so manly with her, and so obliging in their butterfingered offers to take from her a burden of sorrow that neither of them could understand.

What most flattered the two Roberts was the attendance of both Mayor Fleeron and Ex-Mayor Bill Stopple, hats in hands, looking politically at Neil with an unworded leering promise that they would let him off for today.

And the coffin lay in the center of the parlor, and there were strangers all around, people who, Neil could have sworn, had never seen Dr. Kenneth before, and the frescoed figure in the coffin seemed waiting, and they all seemed waiting, sitting around on hired chairs, and there was a stink of improbable massed flowers, and over Dr. Kenneth’s crayon portrait hung a black pall hastily cut out of an old air-raid curtain. But the two Roberts had failed to put away Dr. Kenneth’s corncob pipe, which still rested on top of the piano, the only thing there that was honest and not waiting.

Robert Hearth pontifically raised his hand, and Robert Kingsblood raised his hand, and turned to his mother, who now first sobbed. The pall-bearers looked self-conscious as they moved in like automata. Among them were Cedric Staubermeyer and W. S. Vander, the neighbors who most hated the reborn Neil.

At no time did any of the attendants speak to him, and they only bowed to the blank, polite Vestal and the interested Biddy.