“That is what I had thought of, Mrs. Maddack.”

She went upstairs.  Mrs. Baines had reached the showroom again, and was smoothing out creases in the white damask cloth and arranging glass dishes of jam at equal distances from each other.

“Come, sister,” said Mrs. Maddack.  “A last look.”

And they passed into the mortuary bedroom to gaze at Mr. Baines before he should be everlastingly nailed down.  In death he had recovered some of his earlier dignity; but even so he was a startling sight.  The two widows bent over him, one on either side, and gravely stared at that twisted, worn white face all neatly tucked up in linen.

“I shall fetch Constance and Sophia,” said Mrs. Maddack, with tears in her voice.  “Do you go into the drawing-room, sister.”

But Mrs. Maddack only succeeded in fetching Constance.

Then there was the sound of wheels in King Street.  The long rite of the funeral was about to begin.  Every guest, after having been measured and presented with a pair of the finest black kid gloves by Mr. Povey, had to mount the crooked stairs and gaze upon the carcase of John Baines, going afterwards to the drawing-room to condole briefly with the widow.  And every guest, while conscious of the enormity of so thinking, thought what an excellent thing it was that John Baines should be at last dead and gone.  The tramping on the stairs was continual, and finally Mr. Baines himself went downstairs, bumping against corners, and led a cortege of twenty vehicles.

The funeral tea was not over at seven o’clock, five hours after the commencement of the rite.  It was a gigantic and faultless meal, worthy of John Baines’s distant past.  Only two persons were absent from it—­John Baines and Sophia.  The emptiness of Sophia’s chair was much noticed; Mrs. Maddack explained that Sophia was very high-strung and could not trust herself.  Great efforts were put forth by the company to be lugubrious and inconsolable, but the secret relief resulting from the death would not be entirely hidden.  The vast pretence of acute sorrow could not stand intact against that secret relief and the lavish richness of the food.

To the offending of sundry important relatives from a distance, Mr. Critchlow informally presided over that assemblage of grave men in high stocks and crinolined women.  He had closed his shop, which had never before been closed on a weekday, and he had a great deal to say about this extraordinary closure.  It was due as much to the elephant as to the funeral.  The elephant had become a victim to the craze for souvenirs.  Already in the night his tusks had been stolen; then his feet disappeared for umbrella-stands, and most of his flesh had departed in little hunks.  Everybody in Bursley had resolved to participate in the elephant.  One consequence was that all the chemists’ shops in the town were assaulted by strings of boys.  ‘Please a pennorth o’ alum to tak’ smell out o’ a bit o’ elephant.’  Mr. Critchlow hated boys.