Upon my word I couldn’t say. He was just the ordinary artisan, with a little thoughtfulness added. A small, pale man, grizzled and neat, but the clothes were old. The shininess and bagginess of the knees suggested much kneeling; nothing else gave me a hint.
“I give that up too,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “I’ll tell you, because you’re a stranger. I’m a worm-holer.”
“A worm-holer?”
“Yes, I make worm-holes in furniture to make it seem older and fetch a better price.”
“Great heavens!” I said; “I have heard of it, of course, but I never thought to meet a worm-holer face to face. How do you do it?”
“It’s not difficult,” he said, “to make the actual holes. The trick is to make ’em look real.”
“And what becomes of the furniture?”
“America chiefly,” he said. “They like old English things there, the older the better. Guaranteed Tudor things will fetch anything ... we guarantee all ours.”
“And you have no conscience about it?” I asked.