“‘Good morning to you,’ says he, as pleasant as anyone could say it. ‘You be clerk of the parish, baint you?’ ‘True, your wusshup,’ he replied. ‘And sexton too’ says he. ‘Right you be; and grave-digger and choir leader as well,’ for he thought it no sin to make the most to ’m of his preferments. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I want you for a buryin’—this night at eight o’clock.’ ‘A buryin’, your wusshup,’ says he, ‘and at night?’ ‘Yes, and three on ’em,’ says he, ‘all in one grave.’ ‘Well, it do sound mortial strange, your wusshup, but ’tis you that says it, and not I.’ ‘You’d better go at once,’ he says, ‘and begin the grave, for you won’t have none too much time to spare on’t, ’specially as I want it done on the quiet, so to speak, and you mustn’t take no hand to help you, and meet me punctually as ever is at eight o’clock at Farmer Price’s, up along the hill, and bring a lantern and the parish hand-bier ’long wi’ ’e.’
“He hadn’t much time to ponder on it, as you may suppose, with that grave to dig, and no one to gi’ ’m a helpin’ hand. And mortial hard work he found it, too, for the frost set in early that year, and the ground that hard that, young and lusty as he were, he found it a job to get the pick-axe into ’en.
“Howsomever he did get ’en done, and at eight o’clock he was at Farmer Price’s door, and ’twas opened to ’en by the Bishop hisself. And so, hand in hand as you may say, he and the Bishop, they went into the kitchen. And there right facin’ ’em—packed up agin the wall like so many old grandfeyther clocks—stood three coffins, with a piece of glass let in ’em to show the face, and a dead woman in each!
“Close handy they were to ’m when he took his meals, or smoked his pipe; and when he felt a bit lonesome (so he told Joseph) he’d go up to ’em and ask ’em how they did, and if they felt comferable. And fresh as peant they were, too: only a bit shrivelled, like as ’twere an apple in April. Perhaps ’twas the heat of the kitchen, or may be some stuff he’d put in along wi’ ’em; anyhow you could see their faces right enough and tell they was women.
“‘Take ’em down,’ says the Bishop; ‘Farmer Price’ll lend ’e a helpin’ hand: and we’ve none too much time to get ’em back to the churchyard and bury ’em.’ Joseph hisself could scarce do nought but stare at ’em. To think that that godless man had kep’ ’em there—one on ’em for nigh on ten years—never thinkin’, not he, that he was keepin’ ’em tied hand and foot to this world, with never no chance of a resurrection till he took it into his wicked head to let ’em go. And there they’d a’ been for ten years longer—for just so long he lived—if Bishop hisself hadn’t got wind on’t and come down right away to bury ’em.
“Anyhow they did get decent burial—the three on ’em—at last. For they had Bishop, and Joseph and Farmer Price; though I don’t take no count o’ he, ’cept that he helped to lower ’em and fill in the grave.
“But Joseph were right glad, he were—and so he told I—to see the rare tug he had in draggin’ they three dead women up hill and down hill ’cross to the church-yard. For Joseph never gived ’en no helpin’ hand—you may take your oath on’t—though he did make a show of pushin’ at the bier whensomever the Bishop looked his way.
“Didn’t no one never hear on’t? Yes, they did. But they didn’t take no count on’t. Our people baint over wise about religion, and things were done in those days that’d make a rare potheration now. Besides, you see, Bishop were there, and he made a sight o’ difference. ’Twas a rare fine buryin’, people thought, wi’ a Bishop to put you unnerground; though ’tis true he hadn’t his fine gran’ toggery on, and his girt white sleeves.”
The actors in our humble drama are dead and gone. The Bishop and Price and Joseph have, each in his turn, been followed to the grave, only with less eccentric rites. But the story of the farmer’s “Happy Family” still lingers in the village, and is told and re-told round many a cottage hearth under the quaint but significant title of “Price’s Menagerie.”
P.S. The “Professor” himself came round to-day—“for a pipe of baccy, Sir, if you have such a thing about you”—so I have utilised him to correct his own proof sheets. “There baint nothin’ wrong in ’em, Master Fred (this to a man of sixty!), so fur as I sees. Only you says ‘gived’ where I says ‘gi’ed.’ But taint no odds. Like enough they’ll guess what you means whatsomever you writes down.” Thanks, Matthew, for your tribute to my clearness of expression.