“⁠—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.”