"Oyster at home?" inquired a monkey, rapping at the closed shell.
There was no reply. Dropping the knocker, he laid hold of the
bell-handle, ringing a loud peal, but without effect.
"Hum, hum!" he mused, with a look of disappointment, "gone to the sea
side, I suppose."
So he turned away, thinking he would call again later in the season;
but he had not proceeded far before he conceived a brilliant idea.
Perhaps there had been a suicide!--or a murder! He would go back and
force the door. By way of doing so he obtained a large stone, and
smashed in the roof. There had been no murder to justify such
audacity, so he committed one.
The funeral was gorgeous. There were mute oysters with wands, drunken
oysters with scarves and hat-bands, a sable hearse with hearth-dusters
on it, a swindling undertaker's bill, and all the accessories of a
first-rate churchyard circus--everything necessary but the corpse.
That had been disposed of by the monkey, and the undertaker meanly
withheld the use of his own.
MORAL.--A lamb foaled in March makes the best pork when his horns have
attained the length of an inch.