know, you all like vulgar jokes. Not that this is a joke,—far from it, it is a veritable, properly authenticated family———"
"Business is business," says Jack, interrupting; "give us the epitaph first, and your remarks after."
Who was so very pure within,
She bust this outer shell of sin,
And hatched herself a cherubim;"
"There! burst, not bust," says Jack, reprovingly; "don't expose your ignorance, Nell."
"It is not," I say, stoutly; "burst is quite a leisurely way of doing things. Bust gives you the idea of cracking all over like a chrysalis and flying straight up through the air, as Betsy did."
"I don't think it's as good as Thomas Woodhen," says Alice, gravely. "His widow showed so much sense in adapting herself to circumstances."
"Or that other one," says Milly, looking up—
She kicked up her heels and away she went.'"
"I like the baby's best," says Jack; "that one on an infant three months old, you know—
I wonder what I was begun for?'"
"Nurse told me of one yesterday," says Milly, resting her elbows on a Pinnock, "that she saw with her very own eyes—
'Here lies the unworthy son of a worthy father.'
The stone was erected by the father."
"That is nasty," says Alice; "the others only show extraordinary levity. I wonder what the people were like who made them up?"
