“I ain’t come across a public table to beat it,” stated Mr. Lock. “Of course, I don’t know anything about the private tables in the big houses round here. I expect there are a few good ones in some of them big houses on the cliff. If I was a rich man, I’d have a good billiard-table, I know.”
“I see,” said Mr. Lane, not very brilliantly.
“Once I did think that maybe I’d have a billiard-table of my own,” remarked Mr. Lock, with a smile at his own folly. “But it never come off.”
“How was that?” asked Mr. Lane, alertly.
“I was expecting a bit of a legacy,” explained Mr. Lock. “Not a big ’un, mind, but I thought if there was enough to buy me a billiard-table that ’ud satisfy me. It would have kept me in recreation for the rest of my life. I’d got my eye on a place to keep it, too, and I’d have made a bit of money out of it, one way and another.”
“But—” prompted Mr. Lane.
“But it wasn’t to be,” said Mr. Lock, with a wistful shake of the head.
“And how was that?” inquired Mr. Lane. “The money was left to some one else, eh?”
“There wasn’t no money left at all!” Mr. Lock informed him. “Just a sort of mystery, it was. Anyway, they had to sell the furniture to pay for the funeral, and that tells its own tale, don’t it?”
“Well, well!” murmured Mr. Lane.