“Much black I shall go into,” said Mel.

Maria laughed.  Aunt Pen cried.

“Aunt Pen,” said the cruel Mel, “if you were going to die you wouldn’t be crying.  Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say.”

“Somebody ought to cry,” said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly.  “Don’t talk to me about doctors,” she continued, after a silence interrupted only by the snipping of the scissors.  “They are a set of quacks.  They know nothing.  I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for pall-bearers.  It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate, though.  Speaking of that occasion, Helen,” she went on, turning to me as a possible ally, “I have so many friends that I suppose the house will be full.”

“Wouldn’t you enjoy it more from church, auntie?” said I.

“Oh, you hard and wicked girls!” she cried.  “You’re all alike.  Listen to me!  If you won’t hear my wishes, you must take my commands.  Now, in the first place, I want the parlors to be overflowing with flowers, literally lined with flowers.  I don’t care how much money it takes; there’ll be enough left for you—­more than you deserve.  And I want you to be very sure that I’m not to be exposed unless I look exactly as I’d like to look.  You’re to put on my white silk that I was to have been married in, and my veil, and the false orange blossoms.  They’re all in the third drawer of the press, and the key’s on my chatelaine.  And if—­if—­well,” said Aunt Pen, more to herself than us, “if he comes, he’ll understand.  The Bride of Death.”

After that she did not say any more for some minutes, and we were all silent and sorry, and Mel was fidgeting in a riot of repentance; we had never, either of us, heard a word of any romance of Aunt Pen’s before.  We began to imagine that there might be some excuse for the overthrow of Aunt Pen’s nervous system, some reality in the overthrow.  “You will leave this ring on my finger;” said she; by-and-by.  “If Chauncey Read comes, and wants it, he will take it off.  It will fit his finger as well now, I suppose, as it did when he wore it before he gave it to me.”  Then Aunt Pen bit her lip and shut her eyes, and seemed to be slipping off into a gentle sleep.

“By-the-way!” said she, suddenly, sitting upright on the lounge, “I won’t have the horses from Brown’s livery—­

“The what, auntie?”

“The horses for the cortege.  You know Brown puts that magnificent span of his in the hearse on account of their handsome action.  I’m sure Mrs. Gaylard would have been frightened to death if she could only have seen the way they pranced at her funeral last fall.  I was determined then that they should never draw me;” and Aunt Pen shivered for herself beforehand.  “And I can’t have them from Timlin’s, for the same reason,” said she.  “All his animals are skittish; and you remember when a pair of them took fright and dashed away from the procession and ran straight to the river, and there’d have been four other funerals if the schooner at the wharf hadn’t stopped the runaways.  And Timlins has a way, too, of letting white horses follow the hearse with the first mourning-coach, and it’s very bad luck, very—­an ill omen; a prophecy of Death and the Pale Horse again, you know.  And I won’t have them from Shust’s, either,” said Aunt Pen, “for he is simply the greatest extortioner since old Isaac the Jew.”