Mrs Beaten has never approved of exposed legs, including those of tables. It just isn’t decent, to leave them there on display for all the world to see. Not that the world had ever been in the habit of entering Mrs Beaten’s parlour and she was hardly in the habit of sending out invitations. 

Nevertheless, someone might see. One of Mrs Beaten’s ongoing ambitions in life is to make sure that the moment of her death could come, entirely unannounced, and she would be perfectly ready for it. Her underwear would be clean should some medical inspection be required. Her home would be in perfect order. Therefore it followed that if a person entered her parlour concerned about her possible demise, there would be no unseemly legs on display there.

We can tell from these thoughts that Mrs Beaten had at best a tenuous grasp of what would happen in the event of her death. Much of her planning was based on the assumption that her absence would be noted and commented upon, leading people to decide that Something Must Be Done. In reality the odds were high that by the time anyone noticed that they hadn’t noticed her for a while, the state of her underwear would be primarily informed by the state of decay she had otherwise achieved. The likelihood of a corpse not doing something unspeakable to its own undergarments was something she might reasonably be expected to have a better understanding of.

As for the table legs, it is unlikely that any other islander would give them more than a fleeting glance even if they were shamelessly left on display. Reverend Davies might have had an uncomfortable moment on seeing a carved leg whose shapely form evoked recollections of rounded, feminine thighs. These legs had no such issues. Beneath the table you would find a sturdy calf, a well polished boot and a neatly hung trouser…

With a long table cloth, the unseemly table legs were largely invisible. At least once a week she swept carefully under the table itself. The job always made her shudder because there was no way of avoiding the unseemly legs then or the dreadful feelings they were bound to encourage.