From the false dusk of the awning, Kinny, leaning out to watch the iridescent black top of the funeral car, smelled the indeterminate summer smell of freshly ironed linen and dust. Below, he could see his father help the aunts into the car and stumble in after them, and the car roll away to join the others at the cemetery. The winter before, at the funeral of his father’s other brother, everything had left from here, hearse and all. The house had been crowded with people who had entered without ringing and had seated themselves soundlessly in the parlor, greeting each other with a nod or a sidewise shake of the head, and for days there had been a straggling procession of long-faced callers, who had clasped hands with his father and mother and had been conducted, after a decent interval, to his grandmother’s rooms, where she lived somewhat apart from the rest of the family. They had all come out clucking, “She’s a wonderful woman, a won-der-ful old woman!,” had been given coffee, and had gone away.
