Straw bonnets, bonnets of ribbon: Mrs. Knouse, hawk-nosed and ludicrous in her llama lace shawl. The curved clods making that mound of excavated earth had the slick grease of spade marks on them. Again the horse whinnied.

People turned away. The crowd was lifting and moving with one impulse, like a bird which had rested there and now wrenched itself into reluctant flight. Finis Sketchley muttered to an elderly workman who had been skulking behind a row of cedar trees. He came over and began to move the bundles of limp flowers aside, preparatory to filling the grave.

A few women voyaged past Daniel, moving islands in the widespread machinery of their skirts, clutching quickly at his hand, then ducking their heads and sailing on with handkerchiefs at their noses. The crowd thinned, thinned. Eva Duffey came past. She whispered, “Adam couldn’t be here. Elijah left him at Shultz’s. The baby’s got running-off-of-the-bowels.”

“Come, Daniel,” said the Reverend Solt, earnestly.

The carriages began to creak and clatter. A child squealed, and someone put a hand over its mouth.

“Thank you, Reverend Solt,” Dan said. “I do not believe I’ll go back to the house just now.” He saw an aggrieved glare in the man’s eyes; Reverend Solt had been preparing a lecture for his benefit, he knew. “If there’s nothing else you need to do, you might go back and sit with Mrs. Wurke for a time. She’s upset.”

The minister nodded sourly. He pressed Dan’s hand, and went striding off toward the diminishing row of rigs. Elijah Huddlestone stepped across the corner of the open grave; he glanced into the hole; there were little spots of color in his cheeks. His mother was with him—a dumpy woman in mended poplin, with no bridge to her nose, and false teeth that clicked when she talked. Elijah did not resemble her, but he did look very much like the father who had died when he was three. Mrs. Huddlestone was what Pentland Bale had always called “a widow woman.” Mrs. Syrena Huddlestone. Plain Sewing & Dressmaking Reasonable. There was a faded black-and-gray sign in front of the chunky house near the Diamond.

“I see you did get here, Hud.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Huddlestone patted his sleeve with her calloused little fingers. “You poor boy. Come all this way and never get to see him.”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” said Dan.

“Yes. Yes. Poor soul. Poor old man. It was a nice funeral, Dan—I never see better … You got to come over and take supper with Lijy and me this week.”

“That’s kind. I’d like to.”

Elijah hesitated, hung back. “Are you going to stay around—here?” There was a faint contempt in his question.

“No. I thought I’d take a walk. Get the smell of funeral flowers out of my nose. This—it—”