He had grown so tame that he never moved again.
The funeral took place that afternoon. We buried him next to Musidora. I had had enough of vaults, regarding them, with reason, as uncertain places of sepulture for the presumably defunct. I had never heard, or read, of cremation. I had had the misfortune to break my slate a few days before, and the biggest fragment made a nice tombstone for Caspar Hauser. With a nail and with infinite toil I produced a suitable epitaph.
HERE LIES
HIS AFLICTED
MISS M. BURWELL'S
FATHEFULL LIT
TLE FREND AN
D TAME PLA
YFELOW AND
SUFFERER
C. H.
There was not room for the whole name, but, as I told my fellow-mourners when I read the inscription to them, since we all knew it, the omission was of no consequence. I could have wished that the slate had broken straight, so that the inscription would have gone in better. However, one cannot control circumstance when it takes the shape of a fracture.
Within twenty-four hours after Caspar Hauser's decease he was succeeded by Bay. His name in its entirety, was Baffin's Bay. The alliterative unctuousness of the title pleased me, as Mary 'Liza pronounced it smoothly in her geography lesson, the day on which Hamilcar, the carriage driver, drove over a young "old hare" in the road, and knocked one of the poor thing's eyes out. It was taken up for dead, but presently began to kick, and the ownership reverted to me. It lived a week, and for hours at a time was so nearly comfortable as to eat sparingly of milk, lettuce, cabbage, and clover, with which I supplied it lavishly twice a day. I likewise treated the wounded eye with balsam-capeiva and balm of Gilead ointment, sovereign appliances for the bruises and cut fingers of that generation. A lemon box, with slats nailed across the front by faithful Barratier, was the hospital in which I laid Bay up for repairs. Him, too, I carried daily into the garden, for change of air. He condescended to approve of the parsley patch, limping through it as gracefully as the long tape tied to his right hind leg would allow.
When, upon the third day of his residence in civilized quarters, he had a convulsion in the very middle of the parsley patch, I thought it a playful antic, and was amused and gratified thereat. The second time this happened, James, the gardener, chanced to witness the performance and informed me, brutally, that "that old hyar had throwed a fit, and was boun' to die 'fore long.
"That 'ar lick on de side o' de hade done de bizness fur him, sure. De brain am injerred. Mighty easy thing fur to injer a Molly Cottontail's brain. He ain't got much, an' hit lies close to de top o' de hade."
For forty-eight hours before Bay died, the spasms were distressingly frequent, but I would not have him killed. James might be wrong. Good nursing and plenty of fresh air might bring my patient around. For fear my parents might insist that he should be put out of his misery, I removed the hospital to the playhouse, and gave him the range of the place, forbidding the colored children to tell what was going on. His agonies were nearly over when, in the distraction of anxiety, I took Cousin Frank Morton into confidence. He had ridden over with a message from Cousin Molly Belle.
(Have I mentioned that they had been married for six months?)
The message was to the effect that I must spend the day and night with her. My mother gave ready consent.