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Page 28
"I've ordered the brougham for eleven," he said, "and I've
arranged with Dr. Nicholson to attend to any urgent call that
comes in between that and noon--so, if there is any such call,
you can telephone to him. A few of us are going to attend
this poor man's funeral--it would be too bad to allow a
stranger to go to his grave unattended, especially after such
a fate. There'll be somebody representing the Dean and
Chapter, and three or four principal townsmen, so he'll not be
quite neglected. And"--here he hesitated and looked a little
nervously at Mary, to whom he was telling all this, Dick
having departed for school--"there's a little matter I wish
you'd attend to--you'll do it better than I should. The man
seems to have been friendless; here, at any rate--no relations
have come forward, in spite of the publicity--so--don't you
think it would be rather--considerate, eh?--to put a wreath,
or a cross, or something of that sort on his grave--just to
show--you know?"
"Very kind of you to think of it," said Mary. "What do you
wish me to do?"
"If you'd go to Gardales', the florists, and order--something
fitting, you know," replied Ransford, "and afterwards--later
in the day--take it to St. Wigbert's Churchyard he's to be
buried there--take it--if you don't mind--yourself, you know."
"Certainly," answered Mary. "I'll see that it's done."
She would do anything that seemed good to Ransford--but all
the same she wondered at this somewhat unusual show of
interest in a total stranger. She put it down at last to
Ransford's undoubted sentimentality--the man's sad fate had
impressed him. And that afternoon the sexton at St. Wigbert's
pointed out the new grave to Miss Bewery and Mr. Sackville
Bonham, one carrying a wreath and the other a large bunch of
lilies. Sackville, chancing to encounter Mary at the
florist's, whither he had repaired to execute a commission for
his mother, had heard her business, and had been so struck by
the notion--or by a desire to ingratiate himself with Miss
Bewery--that he had immediately bought flowers himself--to be
put down to her account--and insisted on accompanying Mary to
the churchyard.
Bryce heard of this tribute to John Braden next day--from Mrs.
Folliot, Sackville Bonham's mother, a large lady who dominated
certain circles of Wrychester society in several senses. Mrs.
Folliot was one of those women who have been gifted by nature
with capacity--she was conspicuous in many ways. Her voice
was masculine; she stood nearly six feet in her stoutly-soled
shoes; her breadth corresponded to her height; her eyes were
piercing, her nose Roman; there was not a curate in Wrychester
who was not under her thumb, and if the Dean himself saw her
coming, he turned hastily into the nearest shop, sweating with
fear lest she should follow him. Endued with riches and
fortified by assurance, Mrs. Folliot was the presiding spirit
in many movements of charity and benevolence there were people
in Wrychester who were unkind enough to say--behind her back
--that she was as meddlesome as she was most undoubtedly
autocratic, but, as one of her staunchest clerical defenders
once pointed out, these grumblers were what might be
contemptuously dismissed as five-shilling subscribers. Mrs.
Folliot, in her way, was undoubtedly a power--and for reasons
of his own Pemberton Bryce, whenever he met her--which was
fairly often--was invariably suave and polite.
"Most mysterious thing, this, Dr. Bryce," remarked Mrs.
Folliot in her deepest tones, encountering Bryce, the day
after the funeral, at the corner of a back street down which
she was about to sail on one of her charitable missions, to
the terror of any of the women who happened to be caught
gossiping. "What, now, should make Dr. Ransford cause flowers
to be laid on the grave of a total stranger? A sentimental
feeling? Fiddle-de-dee! There must be some reason."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mrs.
Folliot," answered Bryce, whose ears had already lengthened.
"Has Dr. Ransford been laying flowers on a grave?--I didn't
know of it. My engagement with Dr. Ransford terminated two
days ago--so I've seen nothing of him."
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