Going to funerals is a heart's delight for the hired girl. She relishes the ride in fine weather, the good funeral sermon, the sight of other people's best clothes and furniture, the touch of tragedy we all like in life, the cheerful reaction after the solemnity, and the staving good supper she cooks when they come home. "Bill, go up to Ford Hill and find out about that funeral," is her entreaty on the eve of the event. Bill has been raking with the horse-rake, or, worse, mowing pease all day. Whatever you have to do in this world, if you have ever mowed pease, that you will acknowledge to be the hardest work you have ever done. Bill is tired. There is a hole in the toe of his boot into which a stiff pea-straw has thrust itself once in five minutes all day--a circumstance exhausting to the nervous system of a hired man. And he had the heifer to hunt before milking. The old cows wait at the bars to come up, but the heifer stays a mile away at the top of the pasture. Bill can see her every night lying with her ears pricked up against the sky, and never stirring until she feels a pebble against her forehead. Then she gallops homeward as if remembering that Bill's motto is a kick in time saves nine. However, Bill likes to accommodate. "I'm off like a pot-leg," says he. "What time is it to be?" asks the hired girl when he returns. "I forgot to ask," he replies. "Who's a-going to preach?" "Nobody said," is the answer. "Is it at the house or church?" "I didn't think to find out," returns he. "Well, you _are_ a nimshi!" declares she. "Go yourself next time," rejoins he. "I wish I had your wooden head for a chopping-bowl," says she. "Gaul darn it! you're never suited," says he. "Needn't get your Dutch up: we're going together. You may depend on takin' on us to that funeral: him and her is going," says she. "Walking is too good for you, by thunder!" says he. "It's a sin to be as mad as hops at nothing," says she. "I'm as much of a angel as you be: put a pair of wings on you, you'd be a hen turkey," says he. "I ain't a goose: I've got a head on me, Bill Blowers." "So has a pin." "If I'm a pin, you let me be: children and fools shouldn't play with edge tools. I'm a pin that'll go to that funeral, then. It'll be a good funeral--singing and everything right up to the handle." "Plague take it! I knowed how it would be when I started on the arrant," he grumbles. "You're blue as a whetstone now, but a couple of fritters big as rhinoceroses on your plate to-morrow night will set you up again, I guess," she says. The hired man has a monstrous inaptitude for doing an errand. The time he spends going to the Green to get the horses shod is enormous. He can be depended on for nothing but to come home across lots when the dinner-horn blows.