sing their eyes to
friendly lines and wrinkles.

'And who is dead?' Stephen repeated.

'Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall, said the
under-mason. 'Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make room for
her.'

'When did she die?'

'Early this morning,' his father replied, with an appearance of
recurring to a chronic thought. 'Yes, this morning. Martin hev been
tolling ever since, almost. There, 'twas expected. She was very limber.'

'Ay, poor soul, this morning,' resumed the under-mason, a marvellously
old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would
not stay in position. 'She must know by this time whether she's to go up
or down, poor woman.'

'What was her age?'

'Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But, Lord! by
day 'a was forty if 'a were an hour.'

'Ay, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to rich
feymels,' observed Martin.

'She was one and thirty really,' said John Smith. 'I had it from them
that know.'

'Not more than that!'

''A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was dead for
years afore 'a would own it.'

'As my old father used to say, "dead, but wouldn't drop down."'

'I seed her, poor soul,' said a labourer from behind some removed
coffins, 'only but last Valentine's-day of all the world. 'A was arm
in crook wi' my lord. I says to myself, "You be ticketed Churchyard, my
noble lady, although you don't dream on't."'

'I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in the
nation, to let 'em know that she that was is now no more?'

''Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the
death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had--half-an-inch wide,
at the very least.'

'Too much,' observed Martin. 'In short, 'tis out of the question that
a human being can be so mournful as black edges half-an-inch wide. I'm
sure people don't feel more than a very narrow border when they feels
most of all.'

'And there are two little girls, are there not?' said Stephen.

'Nice clane little faces!--left motherless now.'

'They used to come to Parson Swancourt's to play with Miss Elfride
when I were there,' said William Worm. 'Ah, they did so's!' The latter
sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to a remark
which, intrinsically, could hardly be made to possess enough for the
occasion. 'Yes,' continued Worm, 'they'd run upstairs, they'd run down;
flit