f the grown-ups proposed a
dance.

Grandpa shook his head in protest. "Nay, nay," he said in his thin,
piping voice; "I don't hold wi' dancin'. Never did. You were never
browt up to dance, Reuben, you weren't."

"Reyt enough, father," responded his son, "but you know things has
changed sin' I were a lad. You remember what t' Owd Book says; I don't
just rightly call t' words to mind, but summat about t' owd order
changin'. We mun let t' young uns have a bit of a fling."

"They danced in t' Bible, grandpa," said Rebecca saucily.

"Well, they may ha' done," rejoined the old man, retiring to the
settle; "but I weren't browt up i' that way, an' your father weren't
neither. I were allus taught 'at it were a sort of a devil's game,
were dancing."

However, dance they did, and I played for them, doing my best with the
crazy old box-o'-music in the parlour; and as I glanced through the
open door I saw that Grandpa was following it all with great interest,
beating time the while, in uncertain fashion, with head and hand.

CHAPTER IX

MRS. BROWN EXPLAINS

There was a funeral in the village on the Wednesday of last week. On
the previous Sunday Mother Hubbard had assured me with great solemnity
that something of the sort was going to happen, for had not a solitary
magpie perched upon our garden wall and waved his handsome tail in full
view of the window for at least a minute? What connection there was
between his visit and the calamity which it foretold was not clear to
me, but it appears that the magpie is a bird of omen, and there is an
old rhyme which in these parts is considered oracular:

"One for sorrow,
And two for mirth;
Three for a wedding
And four for a birth."

However that may be, it is a fact that in the late afternoon Dr.
Trempest called to inform me that Farmer Brown was dead.

"He has lasted twice as long as anyone could have foreseen," he said.
"Poor chap, it's a mercy it's all over."

The whole countryside was inches deep in snow when they buried him in
the little God's acre that clings to the side of the hill at the point
where the roads diverge. The grave-digger had a hard task, for we had
had a fortnight of severe frost; but he bent to his work with the grim
persistence of the man who knows that the last enemy is a hard master,
and that there must be no tarrying in his service.

All the village turned out to the funeral, and there was a great crowd
of invited mourn