We and the World, Part I | Page 7

tint or markings.
How dear old Jem did belabour the boy we found torturing it! He was
much older and bigger than we were, but we were two to one, which
we reckoned fair enough, considering his size, and that the cat had to be
saved somehow. The poor thing's forepaws were so much hurt that it
could not walk, so we carried it to the farm, and I stood on the shallow
doorsteps, and under the dial, on which was written--
"Tempora mutantur!"--
and the old miser came out, and we told him about the cat, and he took
it and said we were good boys, and I hoped he would have asked us to
go in, but he did not, though we lingered a little; he only put his hand

into his pocket, and very slowly brought out sixpence.
"No, thank you," said I, rather indignantly. "We don't want anything for
saving the poor cat."
"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.
"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