A Pint of Murder by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

sympathy to spare for anybody that don’t know which side their bread’s buttered on.”
    Dot sounded so exactly like Marion Emery that Janet blinked. Maybe there was some private reason why Mrs. Treadway and Mrs. Druffitt had continued to tolerate the woman’s slapdash ways for all their complaints. Maybe the reason wasn’t so private, just stale gossip that nobody had ever got around to telling young Janet Wadman. Well, what difference did it make?
    “Want me to run over an’ ast Elmer about gettin’ that tunic?” Dot was offering, eager to be up and doing now that she’d eaten everything in sight.
    “Yes, I’d appreciate that.” Janet had had about all she could stand of Dot Fewter for a while. “You can wash the dishes,” she added firmly, “when you come back. I’m going up to bed.”

CHAPTER 7
    H ENRY DRUFFITT HAD NOT been the warmhearted old country GP beloved of sentimental novelists. He’d been punctilious about collecting his bills, when he had any to collect, and caustic with patients who waited till after the late movie on television to demand house calls. However, he had been a lifelong resident, a leading citizen of sorts, and a prominent Owl. Pitcherville turned out in force to give him a grand sendoff.
    The Wadmans were doing their bit along with the rest. Bert was marching in full Owl regalia, Elmer having been most co-operative about the dry cleaning. Janet, feeling very lady-of-the-manor, had spent half the morning out in the garden showing Dot which blossoms to cut for the church, and sent them down by Sam when he made one of his mysterious trips back to the hill.
    She dropped over to make sure the group from the Mansion got something to eat before they left, and found them already dressed for the funeral, self-consciously elegant in newly purchased mourning clothes, except for Elmer, who wasn’t to be included in their party. Mrs. Druffitt was having Potts send up a special car for them.
    “Mama wants us down there early,” Gilly told Janet, “so she can get us bawling good. She thinks it’ll make a better impression going up the aisle.”
    “Now, Gilly,” said Elmer, “you shouldn’t talk that way in front of the kid.”
    Marion went so far as to thank Janet for her thoughtfulness and wish she could sit with them in church. That, of course, would not be possible. Rigid protocol was being observed.
    In the end, Janet rode down with Elmer and Dot Fewter, since Bert had to go on ahead to form up with the Owls. When they got there, Dot cavorted away to join a livelier group. The other two were ushered to a seat of no importance near the back.
    Though this was supposed to be a sad occasion, the church had a festive air about it. Outside its high palladian windows, trees made patriotic maple-leaf patterns against a sapphire sky. The altar was ablaze with zinnias, marigolds, gaillardia, splashing their wild reds and yellows against the gentler shades of cosmos and lupine.
    Many children were present, gay as the flowers in resurrected Easter finery. Why not? What if they’d come only because they’d begun to find the long summer holiday hanging heavy on their hands and wanted to see the Owls march in? Let them experience a funeral as a sort of celebration, Janet thought, one that was solemn yet somehow comical, a death that was really a birth.
    The Owls looked no more outlandish in their feathered regalia than some of the rest in their go-to-meeting clothes. There was old Mrs. Nurstead in the Empress Eugenie hat she’d bought to greet the then Prince of Wales back in 1932. There was Malcolm Webb in the bright green suit he always wore to weddings and funerals, a red bandanna handkerchief peeping modishly out of the breast pocket. There was Bill Hendricks wearing his World War II uniform, not wanting anybody to forget he’d been a sergeant major, as if anybody could. There was Mrs. Fewter looking like the leftovers from a rummage sale.
    Dot Fewter had gotten herself up regardless for