“It is heavy. Just watch me for a moment if you don’t want to lift it yourself.”
Godfrey with evident difficulty lifted the packing-case, staggered a few steps with it and then set it down. The packing-case may have been heavy but it was quite small. It seemed to me that Godfrey was making a rather pitiful exhibition of his physical feebleness.
“You ought to do things with dumb bells,” I said. “The muscles of your arms are evidently quite soft.”
Godfrey took no notice of the taunt. He was in a state of tremendous moral earnestness.
“I want your permission to open these cases,” he said.
“I won’t give you any such permission,” I said. “How can I? They’re not my packing-cases.”
Godfrey argued with me for quite a long time, but I remained firm. For some reason which I could not understand, Godfrey was unwilling to open the packing-cases without permission from somebody. I should have supposed that having already forced a door he would not have boggled at the lid of a packing-case; but he did. He evidently had some vague idea that the law takes a more serious view of smashing packing-cases than it does of housebreaking. He may have been right. But my record so far was clear. I had not forced the lock of the door.
“What do you suppose is in those cases?” said Godfrey.
“Artificial manure,” I said.