In hushed, fearful tones he declaimed: Dear companion in your bloom, Behold me moldering in the tomb, For Death is a debt to Nature due, Which I have paid, and so must you.
"There, now, I must say!" called Merle.

"We better hurry out!" But the Wilbur twin lingered.

Ripe berries still glistened about the stone of the departed Jonas Whipple.
"Aw, gee, gosh, they're just old ones!" he declared.

"It says this one passed to his reward in 1828, and we wasn't born then, so he couldn't be meaning us, could he?
We ain't passed to our reward yet, have we?
I simply ain't going to pay the least attention to it." A bit nervously he fell again to picking the berries.

The mere feel of them emboldened him.
"Gee, gosh! We ain't followed him yet, have we ?" "'As I am now, so you must be!'" quoted the other in warning.
"Well, my sakes, don't everyone in town know that?
But it don't mean we're going to be--be it--right off." "You better come just the samey!" But the worker was stubborn.
"Ho, I guess I ain't afraid of any old Whipple as old as what this one is!" "Well, anyway," called Merle, still in hushed tones, "I guess I got enough berries from this place." "Aw, come on!" urged the worker.
In a rush of bravado he now extemporized a chant of defiance: Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! The Merle twin found this beyond endurance.