.... It's over—I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
A quiet afternoon—not a breath up in the churchyard! I was there quite
half an hour before they came. Some red cows had strayed into the
adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the railing.
While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away; afterwards,
she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen before their time.
“The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to
fall; There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and
gathered them all.”
.... They brought Pasiance very simply—no hideous funeral trappings,
thank God—the farm hands carried her, and there was no one there but
John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor. They read the
service over her grave. I can hear John Ford's “Amen!” now. When it was
over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without a word. I went up
there again this evening, and wandered amongst the tombstones. “Richard
Voisey,” “John, the son of Richard and Constance Voisey,” “Margery
Voisey,” so many generations of them in that corner; then “Richard
Voisey and Agnes his wife,” and next to it that new mound on which
a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of the apple-trees already
hovering.