“Not so!” Pigeon replied. “In this city it’s the Volunteer’s perquisite to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the cemetery. And they make the most of it. You’ll see.”
I heard the order, “Rest on your arms,” run before the poor little procession as the men opened out. The driver pulled the black Flanders beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach I saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly, alight with proper pride. Last came a knot of uniformed men—privates, I took it—of the dead one’s corps.
Said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, “There, Jenny! That’s what I’ll get if I ’ave the luck to meet ’em when my time comes.”
“You an’ your luck,” she snapped. “’Ow can you talk such silly nonsense?”
“Played through by the Guard,” he repeated slowly. “The undertaker ’oo could guarantee that, mark you, for all his customers—well, ’e’d monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the horses passagin’ sideways!”
“She done it a purpose,” said the woman with a sniff.
“An’ I only hope you’ll follow her example. Just as long as you think I’ll keep, too.”
We reclosed when the funeral had left us twenty paces behind. A small boy stuck his head out of a carriage and watched us jealously.
“Amazing! Amazing!” I murmured. “Is it regulation?”
“No. Town-custom. It varies a little in different cities, but the people value being played through more than most things, I imagine. Duddell, the big Ipswich manufacturer—he’s a Quaker—tried to bring in a bill to suppress it as unchristian.” Pigeon laughed.