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     "You know, Dolores, it's almost ten years gone old Jebediah's funeral happened."
     "Ten years? No! I ain't as old as all that yet, Betty – not ten years."
     "Well, how d'you explain Benji just coming on eleven now, then? And you remember what a time Lily had keeping him close at that funeral – he was there all right.
     "Well you cain't blame her, can you, not with all that fuss and hullaballoo. Should be grateful he wasn't wailin' the house down… ten years! I never woulda believed it!"
     "Grandma, aunty, you have to remember not all of us have been in Drayton for seventy years. I missed Jebediah's funeral – we were busy in the garden and Mom thought it was indecent to go to a funeral for someone you never knew."
     "I told you, Dolores, that daughter of yours has some strange ideas in her head. Not from our side of the family, I can assure you!"
     "Well, Dana, we can't have you not knowing about Jebediah's funeral, not if you're going to be going around with us old biddies. Some stories are just meant to be told, no matter what certain daughters of mine might say about it. Now, it was the old churchyard they had it in, wasn't it, Betty?"
     "Yes, indeed – they tore it down to make room for that new schoolhouse they put in, and Drayton ain't had as good a time of it since. That old church was the center of this town, it was, and I don't know that we couldn't have just kept our kids at home and taught 'em just as much as that young hussy ever did."
     "The funeral, aunty?"
     "Oh yes – the funeral. Well, we were all gone down to see old Jebediah laid out, but we had to sit through a mighty long service. We had the new minister in, didn't we, Dolores, and he was all for having everyone he could up for – what was it, them big words…"
     "Impromptu eulogy was what he called it. Said he wanted some spontaneity, or some such."
     "And Ted Gleimer just leapt up. Hadn't seen that much get-up-and-go in him since that boy of his spilled the kettle on him forty years ago. Said he was going to say his piece, by golly, and old Jeb wasn't going to get him off with a clever word this time."
      "All kinds of things he went on about, even brought up that time Jeb ripped him off with those self-sowing seeds."
     "If Ted Gleimer couldn't see through a whopper like that one, I say he didn't deserve that hundred dollars anyway. Oh, but you were outraged about it! Only time I'd ever seen you stand up in church, Dolores, and you just up and shouted at him – 'Let the dead lie!' I think you said. And I don't know that you weren't right after all – but then Edna Weintraub stands up and says, 'Well, I don't care if this is a church, that man has had his last darned laugh at me!' Old Jeb would just poke and prod at her, y'see…"
      "Well, she is a bit impossible, aunty."
      "Oh, wasn't she! Brought up the most ridiculous things, still offended about that mud pie in the petunias after twenty years. And then John stood up to have his say, and Lyda after him, and that church ain't seen that much enthusiasm since the day it was built."
     "And hasn't since! That man played quite a few tricks in his time. But there was all that fuss and hubbub, everyone just shouting away paying no mind to anyone else, and so it took us quite awhile to realize…"
     "Realize what, Grandma?"
     "Realize that Jebediah Jenkins had snuck into the church and was sitting there laughing fit to kill over what we'd been saying about him."
     "Aunty! You know that isn't true!"
     "Oh yes, Dana dear, she's telling the truth. Biggest scandal this town has – Jebediah Jenkins' false funeral."
     "When he really went three years later folks were all for digging up the coffin to make sure he was really in there. Didn't want to go through the same thing twice for no good reason. And the minister! Never again will I trust an outsider. Didn't crack a smile the whole service, but laughing like a maniac once Jeb came on the scene."
     "Turns out the two of them were in it together. Thick as thieves for months, plotting it, though none of us knew it."
     "Ooh, and wasn't Edna Weintraub mad! Just lit right into him, calling him an infidel and a lunatic and a perjurer, just madder than a hornet. Not that she didn't have something of a right – gave us all quite a turn, to see a dead man walking!"
     "But he says, in that big growly voice of his, he says, 'Edna, I ain't gonna deny these good folks the fun of a funeral – Reverend Janssen and I didn't bring you all out here for nothing. That there coffin's got one of our dearly beloved in there just the same. Folks, I'm terrible sorry to have to say it, but old Rex is gone at last."
     "And then, of course, there was an uproar to beat all – don't know how he got out of that church alive. Folks thought if he weren't dead before, maybe it was their job to do the work the good Lord missed out on. Rex was a good old mutt, though – Jeb was right to miss him, though maybe he oughtn't to have gone to such extremes about it…"
     "Grandma, aunty, it's past five. I should really be going home. You know Mom likes to know where I am. Thank you so much for the story – it was very informative."
     "Anytime, dear."
     "Goodbye, love!"
     "Betty dear, do you remember when Edna Weintraub started making sheep's eyes at the Reverend Janssen – and him a good twenty years younger than her?"
     "Ooh, that was the year Jim Stanton had his new inventions all over the place, and Amy had to put him in the shed…"