take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think
that will be really necessary?
Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!
To please their relatives, I suppose.
To please their relatives, you suppose! This he said with intense
scorn. How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote
over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies? He
pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on
which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. Read the
lies on that thruff-stean, he said. The letters were upside down to me
from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over
and read:--
Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a
glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at
Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly
beloved son. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.
Really, Mr. Swales, I don t see anything very funny in that! She spoke
her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.
Ye don t see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that s because ye don t gawm the
sorrowin mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
acrewk d--a regular lamiter he was--an he hated her so that he
committed suicide in order that she mightn t get an insurance she put on
his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that
they had for scarin the crows with. Twarn t for crows then, for it
brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That s the way he fell off the
rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I ve often heard him
say masel that he hoped he d go to hell, for his mother was so pious
that she d be sure to go to heaven, an he didn t want to addle where
she was. Now isn t that stean at any rate --he hammered it with his
stick as he spoke-- a pack of lies? and won t it make Gabriel keckle
when Geordie comes pantin up the grees with the tombstean balanced on
his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!
I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she
said, rising up:--
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