"Oh, father! you are ig'rant. At a pwivate funeral the poor dead 'un
is just sewn up in dock leaves and stuck into a hole in the cemetery."

"The cemetery! Good Heavens, child! do you keep a cemetery in the
garden?"

"Indeed we does, father. We have a very large one now, and heaps and
heaps of gravestones. Apollo writes the insipcron. He is quite
bothered sometimes. He says the horrid work is give to him,--carving
the names on the stones and killing the half-dead 'uns,--but course he
has to do it 'cos Iris says so. Course we all obey Iris. When it is a
pwivate funeral, the dead 'un is put into the ground and covered up,
and it don't have a gravestone; then of course, by and by, it is
forgot. You underland; don't you, father?"

"Bless me if I do," said Mr. Delaney, in a puzzled tone.

"But if it is a public funeral," continued Diana, strutting boldly
forward now, and throwing back her head in quite a martial attitude,
"why, then it's grand. There is a box just like a coffin, and cotton
wool--we steal the cotton wool most times. We know where Fortune has
got a lot of it put away. Iris does not think it quite right to steal,
but the rest of us don't mind. And we have banners, and Orion plays
the Jew's harp, and I beat the drum, and Iris sings, and Apollo digs
the grave, and the dead 'un is put into the ground, and we all cry, or
pretend to cry. Sometimes I do squeeze out a tiny tear, but I'm so
incited I can't always manage it, although I'm sure I'll cry when
Rub-a-Dub is put into the ground. Then afterwards there is a
tombstone, and Iris thinks of the insipcron. I spects we'll have a