Once beyond the curtained doorway, I disengaged myself and again declared that I wished to look at coffins; but the manner in which Mr. Murksom, from then on, combined the shrewd salesman with the spiritual consoler is something my feeble pen altogether balks at recording. As far as I could see, there were no coffins in the room in which I had expected to find an embarrassment of choice, but, resting a protecting palm upon my shoulder as if to shield me from a sudden shock, Mr. Murksom pressed a button in the room’s white paneling, and lo! a natty three hundred and fifty-dollar receptacle turned a sort of somersault and landed, so to speak, at our feet. It was exactly like opening, or letting down, the upper berth in a sleeping car, except that these berths were on end instead of on their sides. Before I had made up my mind, we had pressed buttons and lowered upper berths all around three sides of the room.
“Now, just what is the difference between this one, which costs two hundred, and that one, which is only ninety-eight?” I inquired, for to me they both looked very much alike.
“This one,” Mr. Murksom replied, and I could see he thought me a haggling, heartless person, “is something more—more permanent. That one won’t—well, that one is, as one might say, less able to withstand the—the inevitable conditions. Personally,” he, to my surprise, hastened to add, “I don’t wish for anything too permanent. ‘Dust to dust,’ you know,” he murmured, as he pressed another button. This, I confess, surprised me very much, for it seemed to me that anyone who, for years and years, had buried several persons a day would necessarily fall into the habit of considering himself immortal. For a moment I thought of drawing him out on the subject; it occurred to me that a man whose whole life consisted of death ought to have made some illuminating reflections. Indeed, after I finally accomplished what I had come for, I did begin to ask a question, but was interrupted in the middle of it. For the young man suddenly appeared in the curtained doorway with something wrapped in brown paper and tied with a pink string. He was not exactly excited, he never could have been that, but he was, at least, natural. After our little conversation, I think he had concluded that there wasn’t much point in keeping it up any longer with me. This, at any rate, is the only way in which I could account for his ignoring my presence to the extent of making, in a moment, a most extraordinary and startling announcement. He held the brown paper parcel toward Mr. Murksom, who had turned inquiringly toward him, and then exclaimed, with a pleased smile:
“They’ve found those legs.”
“Ah,” sighed Mr. Murksom, “and where were they?”
“In the wagon all the time. The horses just walked away from the house and a policeman stopped them as they were trying to get into a vacant lot to eat grass. Well,” he ended, in a gratified tone, “I’m glad they found those legs.”
At this, I somewhat hurriedly said good afternoon, and withdrew. They were very little legs. I read about them in the paper the next day.