"Want to show thee summat."
"'Summat', yes—but where is 'summat'?"
"In t'owd cottage. Here 'tis. Come inside."
With quickening interest, Dick followed the idiot into the empty cottage, through the paneless casement of which the moonlight streamed on a scene of dilapidation. The oven door of a rusty kitchen-stove stood open, and in the corner was a tumbled pile of abandoned tinware. Condemned as unfit for habitation, the cottage had obviously been left to fall asunder in its own time.
"Well, Jim, there's nothing here to write home about," said Dick. "Come, now, own up that you've been making a fool of me, and let's get away."
"Ah'm not hevin' thee for t'mug," said Jim solemnly. "There's summat here 'at'll please thee. Ah fun it art for mesen. Noabody knows but me. This ere floor plays a tune. Listen!"
He raised his heavily-booted feet with deliberation and commenced a shuffling dance, grotesquely like the performance of a captive bear. And sure enough to Dick's profound astonishment, the floor did play a tune a jingle that, though harsh, was sufficiently musical to wreathe the face of the idiot dancer in a delighted grin.
"Ah telled thee—didn't Ah tell thee?" cried Jim, in great excitement. "Music!
'All around the mulberry bush,
Pop goes the weasel',"
he sang, kicking up his legs in ludicrous imitation of a pierrot outside a travelling show.