Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/193

 me no more. But I was a-goin' to tell you about that funeral. When we got to the front door of old smug face's house we discovered his uncle's coffin reposin' upon the doorstep very peaceful but in a most awkward sort of position, 'cos you had to crawl over the blarsted thing to get in or out o' the door."

"'Lord love you, my most excellent Mipps,' cried old smug face when he saw it, 'why, this'll never do, now will it, for my late lamented uncle'—I forget the uncle's name but it was Ling something—'is fairly blocking up the entrance, ain't it?'

"'Ling Fu Quong,' I replied, 'you've hit it, for if we 'as to do steeplechase over that there thing every time we wants to get out o' doors for a breather, well, we'll fair tire ourselves out.' And so old smug face agreed, and he accordingly sent for the family sly dog, by which I mean, o' course, the family parson. Well, old sly dog arrived, and of all the fat, self-satisfied looking bouncers I ever seed, he took the cake. It was easy to see as how he made a good thing out of his job. Well, my old friend smug face begins telling him how awkward it was havin' a coffin right across the front door, and old sly dog said as how he were very sorry, but it were just in that place wot the gods had told him to put it.

"'Don't you think that if we were to offer sacred crackers to the gods that they might find as how they've been mistook?' suggested smug face.