Just now, however, there being no kittens, David was slumbering in a furry heap beside Mary-’Gusta at one end of the carriage seat, and Rosette, the smallest of the five dolls, and Rose, the largest, were sitting bolt upright in the corner at the other end.  The christening of the smallest and newest doll was the result of a piece of characteristic reasoning on its owner’s part.  She was very fond of the name Rose, the same being the name of the heroine in “Eight Cousins,” which story Mrs. Bailey, housekeeper before last for Marcellus Hall, had read aloud to the child.  When the new doll came, at Christmas time, Mary-’Gusta wished that she might christen it Rose also.  But there was another and much beloved Rose already in the family.  So Mary-’Gusta reflected and observed, and she observed that a big roll of tobacco such as her stepfather smoked was a cigar; while a little one, as smoked by Eben Keeler, the grocer’s delivery clerk, was a cigarette.  Therefore, the big doll being already Rose, the little one became Rosette.

Mary-’Gusta was not playing with Rose and Rosette at the present time.  Neither was she interested in the peaceful slumbers of David.  She was not playing at all, but sitting, with feet crossed beneath her on the seat and hands clasped about one knee, thinking.  And, although she was thinking of her stepfather who she knew had gone away to a vague place called Heaven—­a place variously described by Mrs. Bailey, the former housekeeper, and by Mrs. Susan Hobbs, the present one, and by Mr. Howes, the Sunday school superintendent—­she was thinking most of herself, Mary Augusta Lathrop, who was going to a funeral that very afternoon and, after that, no one seemed to know exactly where.

It was a beautiful April day and the doors of the carriage house and the big door of the barn were wide open.  Mary-’Gusta could hear the hens clucking and the voices of people talking.  The voices were two:  one was that of Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper, and the other belonged to Mr. Abner Hallett, the undertaker.  Mary-’Gusta did not like Mr. Hallett’s voice; she liked neither it nor its owner’s manner; she described both voice and manner to herself as “too soothy.”  They gave her the shivers.

Mr. Hallett’s tone was subdued at the present time, but a trifle of the professional “soothiness” was lacking.  He and Mrs. Hobbs were conversing briskly enough and, although Mary-’Gusta could catch only a word or two at intervals, she was perfectly sure they were talking about her.  She was certain that if she were to appear at that moment in the door of the barn they would stop talking immediately and look at her.  Everybody whom she had met during the past two days looked at her in that queer way.  It made her feel as if she had something catching, like the measles, and as if, somehow or other, she was to blame.