He
stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces
of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions
of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poor-
grass blinked, and shrank several inches into the back-
ground.
"Upon my soul, I'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful,
Joseph, disgraceful!" said Gabriel, indignantly. "Coggan,
you call yourself a man, and don't know better than this."
Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other
of his eyes occasionally opening and closing of its own
accord, as if it were not a member, but a dozy individual
with a distinct personality.
"Don't take on so, shepherd!" said Mark Clark,
looking reproachfully at the candle, which appeared
to possess special features of interest for his eyes.
"Nobody can hurt a dead woman." at length said
Coggan, with the precision of a machine. "All that
could be done for her is done -- she's beyond us: and
why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for
lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't
know what you do with her at all? If she'd been
alive, I would have been the first to help her.
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