It was so simple.  Somehow, of course, Neale could give the answer she must have.  Why had she not thought of that the instant Eugenia had begun to speak?

She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, “Mrs. Powers, could you do something for me?  I promised I would stay here till the funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone.  Would you mind waiting here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to the mill and back?  There is something important I must see to.”

Mrs. Powers hesitated.  “Well now, Mis’ Crittenden, there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for you.  But I’m kind o’ funny about dead folks.  I don’t believe I’d be much good to Agnes because I feel just the way she does.  But I’ll run over to the house and get Nelly and ’Gene to come.  I guess the four of us together won’t be nervous about staying.  ’Gene ain’t workin’ today.  He got a sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun, cultivatin’ his corn and he don’t feel just right in his head, he says.”

She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her shoulder, “I wun’t be gone long.”

Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head against the door and looked steadily at the shelves before her, full of dishes and jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses.  In her mind there was only one thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all, of anything, until she had been to Neale’s office and had Neale explain it to her.  Surely he would not have started on that trip whatever it was.  It was so early still.  She must not think about it at all, until she had asked Neale.  Eugenia had probably made a mistake about the name.  Even if Neale had gone she would be able to ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a mistake.  That would make everything all right.  Of course Eugenia had made a mistake about the name.

She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and beginning again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers’ voice sounded from the kitchen.  “I met ’em on the way is why I’m back so soon,” she explained to Agnes.  “Nelly had some flowers to bring.  And they’ve been down by the river and got a great lot of ferns too.”

Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her concentration on what Eugenia had said.  This was the first time she had seen Nelly and ’Gene since Frank’s death.  How would they look?  How did people go on living?  How would they speak, and how could they listen to anything but their own thoughts?  What had Frank’s death meant to Nelly?

She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly.  Nelly was bending down and flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief.  When she stood up, she looked straight at Marise.  Under the thick-springing, smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so inscrutable to the other woman.

She held out an armful of flowers.  “I thought you’d like the white phlox the best.  I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said white is best at such times.”