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And then again the sportsmen would move at an undertaker's pace, when the fox had traversed and the hounds would be at a loss to know which was the hunt and which was the heel; and then the carriage also would go slowly, and the ladies would stand up and talk. And then the time for lunch came; and altogether the day went by pleasantly enough. "And so that's hunting, is it?" said Miss Dunstable.
Mrs Gamp went home to the bird-fancier's, and was knocked up again that very night for a birth of twins; Mr Mould dined gayly in the bosom of his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club; the hearse, after standing for a long time at the door of a roistering public-house, repaired to its stables with the feathers inside and twelve red-nosed undertakers on the roof, each holding on by a dingy peg, to which, in times of state, a waving plume was fitted; the various trappings of sorrow were carefully laid by in presses for the next hirer; the fiery steeds were quenched and quiet in their stalls; the doctor got merry with wine at a wedding-dinner, and forgot the middle of the story which had no end to it; the pageant of a few short hours ago was written nowhere half so legibly as in the undertaker's books.
They fairly shrivelled in their skins as they stood beside the open grave and saw, through blurred eyes, the last of Uncle Joe. Both of Mr. Bingle's ears were frozen quite stiff. A much be-furred undertaker's assistant rubbed snow on them with what seemed to be unnecessary vigour and told him to have 'em looked after when he got back to New York. They were ugly things, those ears of his, and Mr.
Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and since that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion." Could anything be more horrible than that red room?
That evening the coffin was sent home, and in the morning at nine o'clock the woman put him on a long flannel garment, and called to the undertaker's men to fasten down the lid and carry him to the grave, where all their friends were waiting them. Just as the body was being placed in the ground the other woman's husband came running up, dressed, as far as anyone could see, in no clothes at all.
At the same time the marriage broker proposed another match; and my father's poor cousins bristled with importance once more. Somehow or other my father succeeded in getting in a word at the family councils that ensued; he even had the temerity to express a strong preference. He did not want any more of the undertaker's daughters; he wanted to consider the rival match.
The rope to be used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and the Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot longer.
'Girl' was the limit: 'lady' would have been worse; 'woman' was good enough for her; but, 'gurl. It was the manner, the proprietary manner, you are one of us now: what had happened? She did not answer. She raised her eye lashes and looked the speaker over from the undertaker's plumes and the gold teeth and the ash colored V of skin to the clock-work stockings and high heeled slippers.
"Besides the servants only five people slept in the house that night Lady Rusholm, her son, two elderly ladies cousins of Sir Grenville's who had come from Yorkshire for the funeral and a Mr. Thompson, a friend of the family who was staying in the house when Sir Grenville died." "Who closed the windows after the body was taken to the drawing-room?" asked Quarles. "One of the undertaker's men."
"It's got up in an imitation of the uniform of the Queen's Greys, I do believe!... It's not a rag doll either.... It's a God-forsaken undertaker's mute in a red and black shroud with a cake-tin at the back of its turnip head and a pair of chemises on its ugly hands.... Sergeant of the Guard!... Here!" "Sir?" and a salute of incredible precision from the Sergeant of the Guard.
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