“I am very fond of it,” he said apologetically, and putting the sixpence carefully back; but I believe he alluded to the cat.

I felt more and more strongly that he ought to invite us into the parlour—­if there was a parlour—­and I took advantage of a backward movement on his part to move one shallow step nearer, and said, in an easy conversational tone, “Your cat has very curious eyes.”

He came out again, and his own eyes glared in the evening light as he touched me with one of his fingers in a way that made me shiver, and said, “If I had been an old woman, and that cat had lived with me in the days when this house was built, I should have been hanged, or burned as a witch.  Twelve men would have done it—­twelve reasonable and respectable men!” He paused, looking over my head at the sky, and then added, “But in all good conscience—­mind, in all good conscience!”

And after another pause he touched me again (this time my teeth chattered), and whispered loudly in my ear, “Never serve on a jury.”  After which he banged the door in our faces, and Jem caught hold of my jacket and cried, “Oh! he’s quite mad, he’ll murder us!” and we took each other by the hand and ran home as fast as our feet would carry us.

We never saw the old miser again, for he died some months afterwards, and, strange to relate, Jem and I were invited to the funeral.

It was a funeral not to be forgotten.  The old man had left the money for it, and a memorandum, with the minutest directions, in the hands of his lawyer.  If he had wished to be more popular after his death than he had been in his lifetime, he could not have hit upon any better plan to conciliate in a lump the approbation of his neighbours than that of providing for what undertakers call “a first-class funeral.”  The good custom of honouring the departed, and committing their bodies to the earth with care and respect, was carried, in our old-fashioned neighbourhood, to a point at which what began in reverence ended in what was barely decent, and what was meant to be most melancholy became absolutely comical.  But a sense of the congruous and the incongruous was not cultivated amongst us, whereas solid value (in size, quantity and expense) was perhaps over-estimated.  So our furniture, our festivities, and our funerals bore witness.

No one had ever seen the old miser’s furniture, and he gave no festivities; but he made up for it in his funeral.

Children, like other uneducated classes, enjoy domestic details, and going over the ins and outs of other people’s affairs behind their backs; especially when the interest is heightened by a touch of gloom, or perfected by the addition of some personal importance in the matter.  Jem and I were always fond of funerals, but this funeral, and the fuss that it made in the parish, we were never likely to forget.

Even our own household was so demoralized by the grim gossip of the occasion that Jem and I were accused of being unable to amuse ourselves, and of listening to our elders.  It was perhaps fortunate for us that a favourite puppy died the day before the funeral, and gave us the opportunity of burying him.