“Be quiet Dave,” said the Bishop, sitting near—“it strikes me you're pow'ful lively for a corpse. It's natural for a dog to howl at his master's fun'ral.”
The coon dog had come out intending to enter fully into the solemnity of the occasion, and when the organ started again he promptly joined in.
“I'm sorry,” said the Bishop, “but I'll have to rise an' put the chief mourner out.”
It was unnecessary, for the chief mourner himself arose just then, and began running frantically around the pulpit with snaps, howls and sundry most painful barks.
Those who noticed closely observed that a clothes-pin had been snapped bitingly on the very tip end of his tail, and as he finally caught his bearing, and went down the aisle and out of the door with a farewell howl, they could hear him tearing toward home, quite satisfied that live funerals weren't the place for him.
What he wanted was a dead one.
“Maw!” said Miss Patsy Butts—“I wish you'd look after Archie B.”
Everybody looked at Archie B., who looked up from a New Testament in which he was deeply interested, surprised and grieved.
The organ started up again.
But it grew irksome to Miss Samantha Carewe seated on the third bench.