Page:Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.djvu/372

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Meanwhile, Hunter had taken his position a few yards in front of the hearse, with the bearers two on each side. As the procession turned into the main road, they saw Snatchum standing at the corner looking very gloomy. Hunter kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, but Crass could not resist indulging in a jeering smile, which so enraged Snatchum, that he shouted out:

'It don't matter! I shan't lose much. I can use it for someone else!'

The distance to the cemetery was about three miles, so as soon as they got out of the busy streets of the town, Hunter got up on the hearse beside the driver, Crass sat on the other side, and two of the other bearers stood in the space behind the driver's seat, the fourth getting up beside the driver of the coach; and then they proceeded at a rapid pace.

About fifty yards from the cemetery gate, Hunter and the bearers resumed their former positions, and they passed up to the chapel at walking pace.

After a wait of about ten minutes the clergyman entered, and at once began to recite the usual office in a wholly unintelligible gabble.

If it had not been for the fact that each of his hearers had a copy of the words, for there was a little book in each pew, none of them would have been able to gather the sense of what the man was saying. His attitude and manner hardly suggested that he was addressing the Supreme Being. While he recited, intoned, or gabbled the words of the office, he was reading the certificate and some other paper the clerk had placed upon the desk, and when he had finished reading these, his gaze wandered abstractedly round the chapel resting for a long time with an expression of curiosity upon Bill Bates and the Semi-Drunk, who were doing their best to follow the service in their books. He next turned his attention to his fingers, holding his hand away from him nearly at arm's length and critically examining the nails.

From time to time as this miserable mockery proceeded the clerk in the rusty black cassock mechanically droned out a sonorous 'Ah-men,' and after the conclusion of the lesson the clergyman went out of the church, taking a short cut through the gravestones and monuments, while the bearers again shouldered the coffin and followed the clerk to the grave. When they arrived within a few yards of their 360