stoutish, maybe, and took a casket that was thick through, but he was
all there, and I know when you lost him it worried you like anything.

"Now, it's none of my business, Mrs. Banger; but casting my eye over
those graves to-day, it struck me that I might fix 'em up a little,
so's they'd be more comfortable like. I think McFadden wants a few
sods over the feet, and Smith's headstone has worked a little out of
plumb. He's settled some, I s'pose. I think I'd straighten it up and
put a gas-pipe railing around Mr. Smyth. And while you're about it,
Mrs. Banger, hadn't you better buy about ten feet beyond Mr. Smith,
so's there won't be any scrouging when you bury the next one? I like
elbow-room in a cemetery lot, and I pledge you my word it'll be a
tight squeeze to get another one in there and leave room for you
besides. It can't be done so's to look anyways right, and I know you
don't want to take all four of 'em out and make 'em move up, so's to
let the rest of you in. Of course it'd cut you up, and it'd cost like
everything, too.

"When a person's dead and buried, it's the fair thing to let him
alone, and not to go hustling him around. That's my view, any way; and
I say that if I was you, sooner than put Mr. Smith on top of McFadden
and Smyth on top of Smith, I'd buy in the whole reservation and lay
'em forty feet apart.

"And how _is_ Mr. Banger? Seem in pretty good health? Do you think we
are to have him with us long? I hope so; but there's consumption in
his family, I believe. Life is mighty uncertain. We don't know what
minute we may be called. I'm a forehanded kind of man, and while his
wedding-suit was being made I just stepped into the tailor's and ran
it over with a tape-measure, so's to get some idea of his size. You'd