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The Wouldbegoods by E. (Edith) Nesbit
page 76 of 319 (23%)

Alice asked whether you had to go past the dead and buried person
to get to the top of the tower, and could you see the coffin.

'No, no,' the man said; 'that's all hid away behind a slab of
stone, that is, with reading on it. You've no call to be afraid,
missy. It's daylight all the way up. But I wouldn't go there
after dark, so I wouldn't. It's always open, day and night, and
they say tramps sleep there now and again. Anyone who likes can
sleep there, but it wouldn't be me.'

We thought that it would not be us either, but we wanted to go more
than ever, especially when the man said--

'My own great-uncle of the mother's side, he was one of the masons
that set up the stone slab. Before then it was thick glass, and
you could see the dead man lying inside, as he'd left it in his
will. He was lying there in a glass coffin with his best
clothes--blue satin and silver, my uncle said, such as was all the
go in his day, with his wig on, and his sword beside him, what he
used to wear. My uncle said his hair had grown out from under his
wig, and his beard was down to the toes of him. My uncle he always
upheld that that dead man was no deader than you and me, but was in
a sort of fit, a transit, I think they call it, and looked for him
to waken into life again some day. But the doctor said not. It
was only something done to him like Pharaoh in the Bible afore he
was buried.'

Alice whispered to Oswald that we should be late for tea, and
wouldn't it be better to go back now directly. But he said--
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