'Five year older at the very least!' cried the other.

Five!' retorted the sexton. 'Ten. Good eighty-nine. I call to mind the

time her daughter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a day, and

tries to pass upon us now, for ten year younger. Oh! human vanity!'

The other old man was not behindhand with some moral reflections

on this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such

weight as to render it doubtful - not whether the deceased was of the

age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the

patriarchal term of a hundred. When they had settled this question to

their mutual satisfaction, the sexton, with his friend's assistance, rose

to go.

'It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be careful - till the summer,' he

said, as he prepared to limp away.

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.'

Feared!' replied the child, sitting down beside him. 'Is it not a good

place?'

'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster. 'But you must be gay sometimes -

nay, don't shake your head and smile so sadly.'

The Old Curiosity Shop