As they had to wait some few minutes outside the chapel the purple-faced driver came round to the window and, holding his ruffled silk hat on, engaged Mrs. Rastin in conversation, mentioning casually that he knew a place where presently as good a glass of beer could be obtained as the heart desired. Mrs. Rastin, promising to remember this, mentioned that for the price, she thought it—meaning the coach and horses—by no means a bad turn-out. The purple-faced coachman took this compliment placidly, remarking that it was cutting it pretty adjective fine to do the thing for two pun two, and if it were his show he should decline to put the harness on the horses under two pun twelve. If people liked to go and die, said the coachman firmly, let them pay for it. On Mrs. Rastin remarking that she supposed it was what we must all come to, the coachman replied that Mrs. Rastin would be perfectly safe in laying all the money she had got on that.
“Now they’re ready for us,” said the coachman. And whistled to his colleague.
Bobbie, following the draped case, which was borne on the shoulders of the two men, felt full of regret that he had no audience; Mrs. Rastin, blown about distractedly by the tempestuous wind, appeared too much occupied to cry. The young curate, in his white surplice, wore a skull cap and looked resentfully at the elements as he spoke the opening words. The liturgy came to Bobbie’s ears in detachments when the wind rested for a moment.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord, he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet. . . .”
“Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days. . . .”
“Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen. . . .”
The small procession moved to a shallow opening in the clay earth. The driver and his stolid companion let the long draped case down to the side of this opening, the driver complaining in an undertone of the other’s clumsiness; as lief have a plank of wood to help him, growled the driver. The straps were placed round the long case; the boy watching had difficulty in preventing himself from offering a word of advice.
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live. . . .”
“Suffer us not in our last hour from any pains of death to fall from Thee. . . .”
The stolid man picked up a lump of dry clay and crumbled it.