preacher had forgotten—this thought twisted his face out of shape, and Dr. Wilcove had cause to revise his hasty judgment and utter a little speech which Paul rather cynically prided himself on recognizing to be nicely adjusted to the occasion. He had long since acquired the habit of indulging grown-ups in their favourite attitudes, of playing down to their preconceptions of juvenility, of making responses that appeared to confirm them in their superior sense of fitness. Dr. Wilcove would have been put out, could he have known with what accuracy his young ward had, in his own mind, fore-echoed his words and the gravity of his tone.
The preparations for the funeral meant very little to Paul. He had not even flinched when he had suddenly realized why Mr. Kestrell was so busy in his workshop. He had a strange conviction that Aunt Verona was now, in some inexplicable manner, getting her second opportunity, that the empty years were being made up to her. He was equally sure that she was not languishing in that silly Sunday-school-card paradise in which he had once believed—as he had believed in Santa Claus.
And when the mealy-mouthed minister said at the funeral service that Verona Windell was now in the presence of her Maker, Paul squirmed in his seat and longed to yell hot denials of the ineptitude. He knew Aunt Verona would never have wished to go to what the minister spoke of as her Maker, and he knew that Aunt Verona was now where she had wished to be. The minister was getting it all crookedy. Who was he, to take smug charge of such a delicate ceremony!
As "chief mourner" Paul felt a sense of importance which soon left him, for he passionately resented the spirit of the proceedings. Why had all these people come? Curiosity? The minister spoke of "one whom some of you here gathered were privileged to see growing up as a girl amongst you." Yes, but if Aunt Verona
