Sunday noons
Four years had passed since the fair Pearl of Orr 's Island had been laid beneath the gentle soil , which every year sent monthly tributes of flowers to adorn her rest , great blue violets , and starry flocks of ethereal eye-brights in spring , and fringy asters , and goldenrod in autumn . In those days , the tender sentiment which now makes the burial-place a cultivated garden was excluded by the rigid spiritualism of the Puritan life , which , ever jealous of that which concerned the body , lest it should claim what belonged to the immortal alone , had frowned on all watching of graves , as an earthward tendency , and enjoined the flight of faith with the spirit , rather than the yearning for its cast-off garments . But Sally Kittridge , being lonely , found something in her heart which could only be comforted by visits to that grave . So she had planted there roses and trailing myrtle , and tended and watered them ; a proceeding which was much commented on Sunday noons , when people were eating their dinners and discussing their neighbors . It is possible good Mrs. Kittridge might have been much scandalized by it , had she been in a condition to think on the matter at all ; but a very short time after the funeral she was seized with a paralytic shock , which left her for a while as helpless as an infant ; and then she sank away into the grave , leaving Sally the sole care of the old Captain . A cheerful home she made , too , for his old age , adorning the house with many little tasteful fancies unknown in her mother 's days ; reading the Bible to him and singing Mara 's favorite hymns , with a voice as sweet as the spring blue-bird . The spirit of the departed friend seemed to hallow the dwelling where these two worshiped her memory , in simple-hearted love .