Oliver goes to sleep in a very dejected frame of mind. He is awakened the next morning by the clatter of someone kicking at the outside door. Investigating, he learns that the noise maker is a repulsive youth attired in yellow "smalls" (tight knee breeches). This is Noah Claypole, who informs Oliver that he outranks Oliver. After Oliver suffers the consequences for breaking a pane of glass while struggling to take down the heavy shutters, the boys are served breakfast. Charlotte treats Noah with the deference befitting his superior station, for he enjoys the distinction of being a charity boy of known parentage.
When Oliver has been with the undertaker three or four weeks, Sowerberry cautiously broaches to his wife a plan that he has in mind. After venting her irritation, Mrs. Sowerberry agrees to listen to the plan, which is: Because of Oliver's melancholy appearance, Sowerberry proposes that Oliver serve at children's funerals as a mute — that is, as a hired mourner provided by the undertaker. Hearing the plan, she grudgingly approves.
The next day, Oliver is "initiated into the mysteries of the trade." Bumble comes to tell the undertaker that he is to conduct the funeral of a poor parishioner's wife. When Oliver and his master arrive at the parishioner's shambles of a home, they find the husband in a state of frenzy. He rages that his wife was allowed to starve to death in the cold and dark while he was in prison for begging to procure food. The dead woman's deranged mother is pleased with herself for outliving her daughter and looks forward to the funeral as a gay respite from their grim existence. But the burial is a dismal, unfeeling affair. The stunned husband collapses and has to be revived with cold water. Even then, his raging and protesting make it necessary for the officials to lock him out of the graveyard.
