Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter.  Her braids of straight, dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped, dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them.  Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth, and a shy, meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face.  She was much more sensitive to public opinion than Faith, and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living.  She longed to put it right, but did not know how.  Now and then she dusted the furniture—­but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice.  And when the clothes-brush was to be found she tried to brush her father’s best suit on Saturdays, and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white thread.  When Mr. Meredith went to church next day every female eye saw that button and the peace of the Ladies’ Aid was upset for weeks.

Carl had the clear, bright, dark-blue eyes, fearless and direct, of his dead mother, and her brown hair with its glints of gold.  He knew the secrets of bugs and had a sort of freemasonry with bees and beetles.  Una never liked to sit near him because she never knew what uncanny creature might be secreted about him.  Jerry refused to sleep with him because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows.  Perhaps it was just as well that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed.  Altogether they were a jolly, lovable little crew, and Cecilia Meredith’s heart must have ached bitterly when she faced the knowledge that she must leave them.

“Where would you like to be buried if you were a Methodist?” asked Faith cheerfully.

This opened up an interesting field of speculation.

“There isn’t much choice.  The place is full,” said Jerry.  “I’d like that corner near the road, I guess.  I could hear the teams going past and the people talking.”

“I’d like that little hollow under the weeping birch,” said Una.  “That birch is such a place for birds and they sing like mad in the mornings.”

“I’d take the Porter lot where there’s so many children buried. I like lots of company,” said Faith.  “Carl, where’d you?”

“I’d rather not be buried at all,” said Carl, “but if I had to be I’d like the ant-bed.  Ants are AWF’LY int’resting.”

“How very good all the people who are buried here must have been,” said Una, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs.  “There doesn’t seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard.  Methodists must be better than Presbyterians after all.”

“Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats,” suggested Carl.  “Maybe they don’t bother bringing them to the graveyard at all.”