Then Reuben noticed that she was dressed in white.  He touched her gown, and looked inquiringly.  “Yes, father dear,” she said, “always.”

On the day of the funeral, when Draxy entered the church leading little Reuby by the hand, a visible shudder ran through the congregation.  The news had run like wildfire through the parish, on the morning after the Elder’s death, that Mrs. Kinney’s hair had all turned gray in the night.  But nobody was in the least prepared for the effect.  It was not gray—­it was silver-white; and as it retained all the silken gloss which had made it so beautiful the shining of it was marvelous.  It kindled her beauty into something superhuman.  The color had left her cheeks also, but in its place was a clear soft tint which had no pallor in it.  She was dressed in pure white, so also was little Reuby; but for this the parish were prepared.  Very well they knew Draxy’s deep-rooted belief that to associate gloom with the memory of the dead was disloyal alike to them and to Christ; and so warmly had she imbued most of the people with her sentiment, that the dismal black garb of so-called mourning was rarely seen in the village.

Bareheaded, Draxy and her little son walked from the church to the grave; their faces the calmest, their steps the steadiest there.  Reuben and Jane walked behind them, bent over and sobbing, and half the congregation were weeping uncontrollably; but the widowed woman and the fatherless boy walked with uplifted glances, as if they saw angel-forms in the air by their side.

“Tain’t nateral; ’tain’t noways nateral; thet woman hain’t got any nateral feelin’ in her,” said Eben Hill, leaning against a grave-stone, and idly chewing a spray of golden-rod.  George Thayer turned upon him like a blazing sword.

“Hev ye got any nateral feelin’ yourself, Eben Hill, to say that, standin’ here an’ lookin’ at that woman’s white hair an’ cheeks, ‘n’ only last Sunday she was ‘s handsome a pictur’s ye ever see, her hair a twinklin’ in the sun like a brown beech-tree, an’ her cheeks jest like roses?  Nateral feelin’s!  It’s enough to make the Elder rise up afore ye, to hear ye say sech a thing, Eben Hill; ‘n’ ef ’twan’t jest the funeral that ’tis, I b’leeve I’d thrash ye right an’ left, here’n sight o’ yer own mother’s tombstone, ye miserable, sneakin’ fool.  Ef there was ever a woman that was carryin’ a hull town straight into the Lord’s heaven on her own shoulders, it’s Mis’ Kinney, an’ that blessed boy o’ her’n ‘s goin’ to be jest like her.  Look at him now, a workin’ his poor little mouth an’ lookin’ up to her and tryin’ not to cry.”