Cyril was not at the funeral. He arrived three days later. (As he
had no interest in the love affairs of Dick and Lily, the couple
were robbed of their wedding-present. The will, fifteen years old,
was in Cyril's favour.) But the immortal Charles Critchlow came to
the funeral, full of calm, sardonic glee, and without being asked.
Though fabulously senile, he had preserved and even improved his
faculty for enjoying a catastrophe. He now went to funerals with
gusto, contentedly absorbed in the task of burying his friends one
by one. It was he who said, in his high, trembling, rasping,
deliberate voice: "It's a pity her didn't live long enough to hear
as Federation is going on after all! That would ha' worritted
her." (For the unscrupulous advocates of Federation had discovered
a method of setting at naught the decisive result of the
referendum, and that day's Signal was fuller than ever of
Federation.)
When the short funeral procession started, Mary and the infirm
Fossette (sole relic of the connection between the Baines family
and Paris) were left alone in the house. The tearful servant
prepared the dog's dinner and laid it before her in the customary
soup-plate in the customary corner.
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