It was right down awkward, and nobody
didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that
long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,
"Don't you worry--just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to
glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads.
So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more
outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides
of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we
heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or
two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn
talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's
back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and
glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his
mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,
over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "HE HAD
A RAT!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his
place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because
naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost
nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up
to and liked.
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