The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

								

an unmarried male who shilly-shallied in the matter of wedding.
No actual scandal ever attached to Flenton Hands. If there were
improprieties to be debited against him, he kept such matters
out of the sight of Turkey Track people, and only a vague rumor
of something discreditable associated itself with his Valley
connections to warrant young girls in pouting their lips and
referring to him as "that old Flenton Hands"; while their mothers
reproved and told them that he was one of the best young men, as
well as one of the best matches, in the neighborhood.
So far as personal appearance went, he was well enough, yet with
a curious suggestion of solidity as though his flesh might have
been of oak or iron. The countenance, too, with its round, high
cheek-bones, had an unpleasing immobility, resting always in a
somewhat slyish cast of expression which the odd slant of the
light gray eyes gave to it. For the rest, he was thin-lipped,
with thick, straight, dark hair, and an almost urban air of
gentlemanliness, an effort at gentility which, in a shorter and
more cheerful individual, would have been smug.
"Flenton's gone for the coffin," Sallie Blevins [23] said. "He
always tends to it when there's anything to do that calls for
money to be spent."
"I reckon he's got a plenty," supplied little Rilly Trigg; "but
someway I never could like his looks greatly. There, I oughtn't
to have said that--and his granny laying dead in the house
that-a-way."
Callista did not add her opinion to this discussion, but finding
that she was in no danger of meeting Flenton, hurried the others
promptly up to the house. As soon as she came in sight, Little
Liza, six feet tall, with a jimber-jaw and bass voice, came and
fell upon her neck and wept. Little Liza Hands got her
descriptive adjective from being the third of the name. To-day
she was especially prominent, because Granny Yearwood, the first
Eliza, ninety pounds of fiery energy and ambition, had at last
laid down the burden of her days. Her daughter, Eliza the
second, had lain beside her husband, Eliphalet Hands, in
churchyard mold these twenty years; and her big daughter, with
the bovine profile, the great voice, and the timid, fluttered
soul of a small child, remained in the world, the only Eliza
Hands--yet still Little Liza to those about her. And for her
name's sake, Little Liza was chief mourner.
The Hands girls all had a sort of adoring attitude toward
Callista Gentry. Flenton wanted her, and they had been trying to
get Flenton everything he wanted since he was small enough to
[24] cry for the moon, and strike at the hand which failed to
pluck it down for him. Callista had not intended to stay. She
was to be over later in the day--or the same night, rather--with
the young people who sat up. But Little Liza managed to detain
her on one pretext or another until the coffin arrived and
Granny was finally placed therein.
"Just look at them thar shiny trimmin's on that thar coffin,"