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“For why could not the fool have saved for his burying, I don’t say?” Annie cried. “Let the perished perish. That’s equal for all.”

“In sense is your speech,” Simon agreed. “Shop fach very neat he might have if he was like me and you.”

“Throwing away money he did,” Annie said. “I helped him three years ago when he was sacked. Did I not pay for him to sleep one month in lodgings?”

“I got his frock coat cleaned at cost price,” Jane fach remembered, “and sewed silk on her fronts. I lent him lendings. Where are my lendings?”

“A squanderer you were,” Simon rebuked the body. “Tidy sums you spent in pubs. Booze got you the sack after twenty years in the same shop. Disgraced was I to have such a brother as you, Shacob. Where was your religion, man? But he has to be buried, little sisters, or babbling there’ll be. Cheap funeral will suit in Fulham cematary. Reasonable your share is more than mine, because the Big Man has trusted me with sons.”

“No sense is in you,” Annie shouted. “Not one coin did he repay me. The coins he owed me are my share.”

“As an infidel you are,” said Simon. “Ach y fy, cheating the grave of custom.”

“Leaving am I.” Jane fach rose. “Late is the day.”

“Woe is me,” Simon wailed. “Like the old Welsh of Cardigan is your cunning. Come you this night here to listen to funeral estimates. Don’t you make me bawl this in your department, Annie, and in your office laundry, Jane.”

From the street door he journeyed by himself to Balham, and habiting his face with grief, he related to Mr. Ward how Jacob died.

“He passed in my arms,” he said; “very gently–willingly he gave back the ghost. A laugh in his face that might be saying: ‘I see Thy wonders, O Lord.'”

“This is very sad,” said Mr. Ward. “If there is anything we can do–“

“You speak as a Christian who goes to chapel, sir. It’s hard to discuss business now just. But Jacob has told he left a box in your keep.”

“I don’t think so. Still, I’ll make sure.” Mr. Ward went away, and returning, said: “The only thing he left here is this old coat which he wore at squadding in the morning. Of course there is his salary–“

“Yes, yes, I know. I’d give millions of salaries for my brother back.”

“You are his only relative?”

“Indeed, sir. No father and mother had he. An orphan. Quite pathetic. I will never grin again. Good afternoon, sir. I hope you’ll have a successful summer sale.”

“Hadn’t you better take his money?” said Mr. Ward. “We pay quarterly here.”

“Certainly it will save coming again. But business is business, even in the presence of the dead.”

“It’s eighteen pounds. That’s twelve weeks at one-ten.”

“Well, if you insist, insist you do. Prefer I would to have my brother Jacob back.”

Simon put the coat over his arm and counted the money, and after he had drunk a little beer and eaten of bread and cheese, he made deals with a gravedigger and an undertaker, and the cost for burying Jacob was eight pounds.

That night he was with his sisters, saying to them: “Twelve soferens will put him in the earth. Four soferens per each.”

“None can I afford,” Jane fach vowed. “Not paid my pew rent in Capel Charing Cross have I.”

“Easier for me to fly than bring the cash,” said Annie. “Larger is your screw than me.”

Simon smote the ground with his umbrella and stayed further words. “Give the soferens, bullocks of Hell fire.”

Annie and Jane fach were distressed. The first said: “The flesh of the swine shall smell before I do.” The second said: “Hard you are on a bent-back wench.”

Notwithstanding their murmurs, Simon hurled at them the spite of his wrath, reviling them foully and filthily; and the women got afraid that out of his anger would come mischief, and each gave as she was commanded.

The third day Simon and Annie and Jane fach stood at Jacob’s grave; and Annie and Jane were put to shame that Simon bragged noisily how that he had caused a name-plate to be made for Jacob’s coffin and a wreath of glass flowers for the mound of Jacob’s grave.