'What?' asked old David.
'He's very deaf, poor fellow!' cried the sexton. 'Good-bye!'
'Ah!' said old David, looking after him. 'He's failing very fast.
He ages every day.'
And so they parted; each persuaded that the other had less life in
him than himself; and both greatly consoled and comforted by the
little fiction they had agreed upon, respecting Becky Morgan, whose
decease was no longer a precedent of uncomfortable application, and
would be no business of theirs for half a score of years to come.
The child remained, for some minutes, watching the deaf old man as
he threw out the earth with his shovel, and, often stopping to
cough and fetch his breath, still muttered to himself, with a kind
of sober chuckle, that the sexton was wearing fast. At length she
turned away, and walking thoughtfully through the churchyard, came
unexpectedly upon the schoolmaster, who was sitting on a green
grave in the sun, reading.
'Nell here?' he said cheerfully, as he closed his book. 'It does
me good to see you in the air and light. I feared you were again
in the church, where you so often are.
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