Aloud—“Father told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave.”
“So ’tis now—but it took its rise from this very thing. His family were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal. Some folks twisted it round to mean that old Hugh didn’t believe in the resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after a while the talk died away.”
Emily skipped over to another lichen-grown stone.
“Elizabeth Burnley—who was she, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Old William Murray’s wife. He was Hugh’s brother, and came out here five years after Hugh did. His wife was a great beauty and had been a belle in the Old Country. She didn’t like the P. E. Island woods. She was homesick, Emily—scandalous homesick. For weeks after she came here she wouldn’t take off her bonnet—just walked the floor in it, demanding to be taken back home.”
“Didn’t she take it off when she went to bed?” asked Emily.
“Dunno if she did go to bed. Anyway, William wouldn’t take her back home so in time she took off her bonnet and resigned herself. Her daughter married Hugh’s son, so Elizabeth was your great-great-grandmother.”
Emily looked down at the sunken green grave and wondered if any homesick dreams haunted Elizabeth Burnley’s slumber of a hundred years.
“It’s dreadful to be homesick—I know,” she thought sympathetically.
“Little Stephen Murray is buried over there,” said Cousin Jimmy. “His was the first marble stone in the burying-ground. He was your grandfather’s brother—died when he was twelve. He has,” said Cousin Jimmy solemnly, “become a Murray tradition.”
“Why?”
