“A—a what?”
“Embalmer.” Mr. Jope chewed for a moment or two upon a quid of tobacco, and began a thoughtful explanation. “Sort of party you’d go to supposin’ your reverence had a corpse by you and wanted to keep it for a permanency. You take a lot of gums and spices, and first of all you lays out the deceased, and next—”
“Yes, yes,” the parson interrupted, hurriedly; “I know the process, of course.”
“What—to practice it?” Hope illumined Mr. Jope’s countenance.
“No, most certainly not. . . . But, my good man, an embalmer!—and at Botusfleming, of all places!”
The sailor’s face fell. He sighed patiently. “That’s what they said at Saltash, more or less. I got a sister living there—Sarah Treleaven her name is—a widow woman, and sells fish. When I called on her this morning, ‘Embalmer?’ she said; ‘go and embalm your grandmother!’ Those were her words, and the rest of the population wasn’t scarcely more helpful. But as luck would have it, while I was searchin’, Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside o’ the barber’s shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case. Bill began to admire it, careless like, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing. Maybe your reverence knows the man? ‘A. Grigg and Son’ he calls his-self.”
“Grigg? Yes, to be sure; he stuffed a trout for me last summer.”
“What weight?—making so bold.”
“Seven pounds.”
Mr. Jope’s face fell again. “Well-a-well,” he suggested, recovering himself, “I daresay the size don’t matter, once you’ve got the knack. We’ve brought him along, anyway; an’ what’s more, we’ve made him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin’ job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him.”