“As if our whole vocation
               Were endless imitation——­”

Jem and I had already laid our gardens waste, and built a rude wall of broken bricks round them to make a churchyard; and I can clearly remember that we had so far profited by what we had overheard among our elders, that I had caught up some phrases which I was rather proud of displaying, and that I quite overawed Jem by the air with which I spoke of “the melancholy occasion”—­the “wishes of deceased”—­and the “feelings of survivors” when we buried the puppy.

It was understood that I could not attend the puppy’s funeral in my proper person, because I wished to be the undertaker; but the happy thought struck me of putting my wheelbarrow alongside of the brick wall with a note inside it to the effect that I had “sent my carriage as a mark of respect.”

In one point we could not emulate the real funeral:  that was carried out “regardless of expense.”  The old miser had left a long list of the names of the people who were to be invited to it and to its attendant feast, in which was not only my father’s name, but Jem’s and mine.  Three yards was the correct length of the black silk scarves which it was the custom in the neighbourhood to send to dead people’s friends; but the old miser’s funeral-scarves were a whole yard longer, and of such stiffly ribbed silk that Mr. Soot, the mourning draper, assured my mother that “it would stand of itself.”  The black gloves cost six shillings a pair, and the sponge-cakes, which used to be sent with the gloves and scarves, were on this occasion ornamented with weeping willows in white sugar.

Jem and I enjoyed the cake, but the pride we felt in our scarves and gloves was simply boundless.  What pleased us particularly was that our funeral finery was not enclosed with my father’s.  Mr. Soot’s man delivered three separate envelopes at the door, and they looked like letters from some bereaved giant.  The envelopes were twenty inches by fourteen, and made of cartridge-paper; the black border was two inches deep, and the black seals must have consumed a stick of sealing-wax among them.  They contained the gloves and the scarves, which were lightly gathered together in the middle with knots of black gauze ribbon.

How exquisitely absurd Jem and I must have looked with four yards of stiff black silk attached to our little hats I can imagine, if I cannot clearly remember.  My dear mother dressed us and saw us off (for, with some curious relic of pre-civilized notions, women were not allowed to appear at funerals), and I do not think she perceived anything odd in our appearance.  She was very gentle, and approved of everything that was considered right by the people she was used to, and she had only two anxieties about our scarves:  first, that they should show the full four yards of respect to the memory of the deceased; and secondly, that we should keep them out of the dust, so that they might “come in useful afterwards.”