“I do so; though ’twas a good few years ago I first heard en.”
“Yes,” said Lickpan, “that there old familiar joke have been in our family for generations, I may say. My father used that joke regular at pig-killings for more than five and forty years—the time he followed the calling. And ’a told me that ’a had it from his father when he was quite a chiel, who made use o’ en just the same at every killing more or less; and pig-killings were pig-killings in those days.”
“Trewly they were.”
“I’ve never heard the joke,” said Mrs. Smith tentatively.
“Nor I,” chimed in Mrs. Worm, who, being the only other lady in the room, felt bound by the laws of courtesy to feel like Mrs. Smith in everything.
“Surely, surely you have,” said the killer, looking sceptically at the benighted females. “However, ’tisn’t much—I don’t wish to say it is. It commences like this: ‘Bob will tell the weight of your pig, ’a b’lieve,’ says I. The congregation of neighbours think I mane my son Bob, naturally; but the secret is that I mane the bob o’ the steelyard. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Haw, haw, haw!” laughed Martin Cannister, who had heard the explanation of this striking story for the hundredth time.
“Huh, huh, huh!” laughed John Smith, who had heard it for the thousandth.
“Hee, hee, hee!” laughed William Worm, who had never heard it at all, but was afraid to say so.
“Thy grandfather, Robert, must have been a wide-awake chap to make that story,” said Martin Cannister, subsiding to a placid aspect of delighted criticism.