unexpectedly reminded of death. "You, Bjerregrav, you ought to be
a hearse-driver; then at least you wouldn't work to no purpose!"

"It isn't to no purpose when they are dead," stammered Bjerregrav.
"I am not so poor that I need much, and there is no one who stands
near to me. No living person loses anything because I follow those
who die. And then I know them all, and I've followed them all in
thought since they were born," he added apologetically.

"If only you got invited to the funeral feast and got something
of all the good things they have to eat," continued the baker,
"I could understand it better."

"The poor widow, who sits there with her four little ones and
doesn't know how she's to feed them--to take food from her--no,
I couldn't do it! She's had to borrow three hundred kroner so that
her man could have a respectable funeral party."

"That ought to be forbidden by law," said Master Andres; "any one
with little children hasn't the right to throw away money on the
dead."

"She is giving her husband the last honors," said Jeppe reprovingly.
"That is the duty of every good wife."

"Of course," rejoined Master Andres. "God knows, something must be
done. It's like the performances on the other side of the earth,
where the widow throws herself on the funeral pyre when the husband
dies, and has to be burned to death."