Jevons in an old Norfolk suit and with his hair rumpled was standing on a ten-foot plot of grass contemplating a bed-tester and four bed-posts that leaned up against the palings in the embrace of a bedstead turned upon its side, and Viola in the upper window was contemplating Jevons.
He called to her, "Have you measured?" And she answered, "Yes. He says it can't be done. Oh, there's Furny!"
Jevons turned to me with a smile addressed to the bed-tester rather than to me. Viola came down to us followed by a tall stout carpenter, visibly her slave.
The carpenter was saying: "That there room is out by a good four inches—by a good four inches 'tis. An' the way you've got to look at it is this, m'm. Not as this 'ere tester is too 'igh fer that ceilin', but how as that there ceilin' is too low fer this tester."
"Quite so," said Jevons. "And in that case you've got to raise the ceiling four inches."
"No, sir," said the carpenter (he spoke severely to Jevons). "You 'ave not. If I take you off a two inch from each leg of that there bedstead, and a two inch from each of them there postsis, it'll be the same as if the builder 'e raised you the ceilin' a four inch."
"By Jove," said Jevons. "So it will."
"Ay, and it'll corst you somethin' like four shillin', instead of p'raps a matter of forty pound. W'en it comes to tamperin' with ceilin's, you never know where you are."
"I don't know where I am now," said Jevons, "but it might be better to leave the ceiling alone. They haven't started tampering, have they?"
"No, sir. They have not."