She understood that it was for Coonrod's sake that his father wished the funeral to be there; and she confided to Mrs.March that she believed Coonrod would have been pleased.

"Coonrod was a member of the 'Piscopal Church; and fawther's doin' the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for anybody.

He thought the world of Coonrod, fawther did.

Mela, she kind of thought it would look queer to have two funerals from the same house, hand-runnin', as you might call it, and one of 'em no relation, either; but when she saw how fawther was bent on it, she give in.

Seems as if she was tryin' to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she could.
Mela always was a good child, but nobody can ever come up to Coonrod." March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless absurdity of Dryfoos's endeavor at atonement in these vain obsequies to the man for whom he believed his son to have died; but the effort had its magnanimity, its pathos, and there was a poetry that appealed to him in the reconciliation through death of men, of ideas, of conditions, that could only have gone warring on in life.