[Dark Saint Alaick]

"You DEAR good souls!--how LOVELY!--how COULD you!"
Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. The king was saying--in the middle of something he'd started in on--
"--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. That's why they're invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want ALL to come--everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public."
And so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, "OBSEQUIES, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. The king he reads it and puts it in his pocket, and says:
"Poor William, afflicted as he is, his HEART'S aluz right. Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all welcome. But he needn't a worried--it was jest what I was at."