There was one rule which old Joseph would never break, and that was that there should be no interments after four o'clock. Plead with him, press him, threaten him, it was to no purpose; flinch he would not for rich or for poor, for parson or for people. More than once he had driven the mourners back from the gates, and one winter's afternoon, when the corpse had been brought a long distance, it was left for the night in a neighbouring barn. Upon this occasion a riot was with difficulty averted. But old Joseph stood firm, and at the risk of his life carried the day. This was long years ago. Now, throughout the whole countryside it was known that no corpse passed through Rehoboth gates after four o'clock.
‘You'll happen look in an' see th' owd woman afore yo' go wom',’ said Joseph to Mr. Penrose, as the minister finished his entry of the funeral in the chapel register, ‘hoo's nobbud cratchenly (shaky).’
Joseph and his wife lived in the lower room of a three-storied cottage at the end of the chapel, the second and third stories of the said cottage being utilized by the Rehoboth members as Sunday-schools.
Entering, Mr. Penrose saw the old woman crouching over the hearth and doing her best to feed the fast-dying fires of her vitality. As she raised her wrinkled face, crowned with white hair and covered with a coloured kerchief, a gray shawl wrapped round her lean and stooping shoulders, she smiled a welcome, and bade him be seated.
‘So yo'n put away owd Chris,’ she said, as soon as Mr. Penrose had taken his seat by her side. ‘Well, he were awlus one for sleepin'. Th' owd felley would a slept on a clooas-line if he could a' fun nowhere else to lay hissel. But he'll sleep saander or ever naa. They'll bide some wakkenin' as sleep raand here, Mr. Penrose. Did he come in a yerst, or were he carried?’
‘He was carried,’ answered the minister, somewhat in uncertainty as to the meaning of the old woman's question.
‘I were awlus for carryin'. I make nowt o' poor folk apein' th' quality, and when they're deead and all. Them as keeps carriages while they're wick can ride in yersts to their berryin' if they like, it's nowt to me; but when I dee I's be carried, and noan so far, noather.’
This moralizing on funerals by the sexton's wife was a new phase of life to Mr. Penrose. He had never before met with anyone who took an interest in the matter. It was true that in the city from which he had lately come the question of wicker coffins and of cremation was loudly discussed; but the choice between a hearse and ‘carrying’ as a means of transit to the tomb never dawned on him as being anything else than a question of utility—the speediest and easiest means of transit.
After the deliverance of her mind on the snobbishness of poor people in the use of the hearse, she continued: