"Why, that's just exactly what it does do!" cries Mr. Hannaford, enormously delighted. "Just the very notion of it, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't! Now you come along over here." And Mr. Hannaford would leg-and-cane crack, and Percival would trot and chatter, over to another marvel, where a similar performance would be gone through, owner and spectator tremendously happy, and both profoundly serious.
Mr. Hannaford would usually propose lunch after this. Mr. Hannaford permitted no women in his establishment; but the long, low-roofed dining-room in the old farmhouse was kept at a shining cleanliness, and the meal was invitingly cooked, by a one-armed man of astoundingly fierce appearance and astonishingly mild disposition, who answered to the names of Ob and Diah accordingly as Mr. Hannaford preferred the former or latter half of the Obadiah to which the one-armed man was entitled, and who had left the greater part of his missing arm in the lion's cage he had attended when travelling with Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus.
Three places were always set at the table when Percival visited. One for Mr. Hannaford at one end, one at the other end for brother Stingo—"in case," as Mr. Hannaford would say—and one on Mr. Hannaford's right for Percival. There was a tremendous silver tankard of ale for Mr. Hannaford, a similar tankard for Percival—requiring both hands and containing milk—and always, when Mr. Hannaford raised the dish-cover, there developed from the cloud of steam a plump chicken which Mr. Hannaford called chickun and Percival chicking and which they both fell upon with quite remarkable appetites.
"Well, it's a most astonishing thing to me," Percival would say when the cover went up, and the chicken settled out of the steam. "Most amazing! You know I like chicking better than anything, and every time I come you just happen to have chicking for dinner! Most amazing to me, you know!"
And Mr. Hannaford would lay down the carving knife and fork and stare at the chicken and say: "Well, it is a chickun again, so it is, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!" and would give a tremendous wink at Ob in order to enjoy with him the joke arising from the fact that directly Percival was sighted on the farm a messenger was sent to Ob to prepare the meal that Percival liked best.
Then they would eat away, and pull away at the colossal tankards, and Percival would always make a point of saying: "Stingo not home?"
A long pull at the tankard and a heavy sigh from Mr. Hannaford: "Not just yet, little master. Still restless, I'm afraid. Still restless."
And Percival, in the old phrase and with the air of a grandfather: "Well, he'll settle down, you know. He'll settle down."
"Why, that's just what I say!" Mr. Hannaford would exclaim, immensely comforted. "Settle down—of course he will! Just what I'm always telling him, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!"
Always the same jolly lunch, always the same mingled seriousness and jolly fun, always the same jokes. Percival did not know that much of it was carefully planned by Mr. Hannaford that he might enjoy the fullest relish of the Pocket Marvel's visit. There was the great chicken joke, there was also the killing joke for the production of which by Percival Mr. Hannaford would dawdle lunch to an inordinate length.