“You are mistaken. I am dead, and it is time to bury me! Martin is dead, also, and he was saying to me just now that it is not right for old Charles, that grinning darky over there in his red monkey suit, to be playing the fiddle and dancing when there are so many of us dead and unburied. It is not the kind of music for a funeral. He ought to play the dead march.”
“Nonsense!” answered the young doctor; but Alden lingered, gabbling on vacantly:
“I have a note up my sleeve to slip to the directors when they come again, complaining of the superintendent for not having us buried when we are dead. He spends too much time flirting with Miss Blue and the others, and neglects us. I’ll bet you a dime the directors will make him squirm when they read my note. Want to see it?” cordially.
Doctor Rupert shook his head kindly. He had already seen several of these Round Robins gotten up by querulous patients and complaining of everybody and everything. The directors were always deluged with them when they met, and usually comforted the writers with tobacco.
“Now, I will tell you, Alden, why you and Martin have not gotten your caskets yet,” the young doctor said, concluding to humor his whim. “It is because you have not given your order, and the superintendent does not know what style you want. Take my advice, and go and ask him for the style book on undertaking, and you and Martin can make your own selections. Fashions in caskets have changed, you know.”
Alden listened attentively with his eyes cast down, and replied briskly:
“I shall choose a metallic casket, hermetically sealed, so that the rascally doctors cannot steal me out and cut up my head to find what was the matter with my brain!”
He was going away, but seeming for the first time to become aware of Eva’s presence, he gave her a shifty glance from the corner of his eye, saying earnestly:
“I heard you had got well and were going to leave Weston, little Eva. I wish I was in your place. If you see any of my relatives when you get out, please tell them I am dead, and that I died a most horrible death. I wish they would come to my funeral. Good-by,” and he put out his cold, clammy hand and pressed hers, sending a shudder through all her veins. He was so horribly realistic it seemed as if he were indeed a living corpse now stalking away in grim intent to seek the style book on undertaking.
“How pitiful!” she cried, looking up at Doctor Rupert with such pearly tears in her eyes that he longed to clasp her in his arms and kiss them away. She added almost bitterly: