"'And now,' says I, 'per'aps you won't mind letting me go back to git some clothes on.'
"In one minute,' he says, and went on calmly stowing the things away, and when he finished, he looks at me quite serious, and says, 'I'm obliged to you,' he says, 'and I hope you haven't ketched cold standing with your feet on them bricks and nothing much on you,' he says. 'But I want most particular to arst you not to forget to remember about that bird I giv' you,' he says. 'You call it a jackdaw, and I've no particular objection to that, only don't go and run away with the idea that it's just an or'nary jackdaw. It's a different sort, and you'll come to know its value bime-by, and that it ain't the kind of bird you can buy with a bit of bread and a pinch of tea,' he says. 'And there's something else you've got to think of—that wife of yours. I've been sort of married myself and can feel for you,' he says. 'The time will come when that there bird's pretty little ways will amuse her, and last of all it'll make her smile, and you'll get the benefit of that,' he says. 'And you'll remember the bird was giv' to you by a man named Jones—that's my name, Jones—walking from Newcastle to Dorchester, looking for work. A poor man, you'll say, down on his luck, but not one of the common sort, not a greedy, selfish man, but a man that's always trying to do something to make others happy,' he says.
"And after that, he said, 'Good-bye,' without a smile, and walked off.
"And there at the door I stood, I don't know how long, looking after him going down the road. Then I laughed; I don't know that I ever laughed so much in my life, and at last I had to sit down on the bricks to go on laughing more comfortably, until the missus came and arst me, sarcastic-like, if I'd got the high-strikes, and if she'd better get a bucket of water to throw over me.
"I says, 'No, I don't want no water. Just let me have my laugh out and then it'll be all right.' Well, I don't see nothing to laugh at,' she says. 'And I s'pose you thought you giv' him a penny. Well, it wasn't a penny, it was a florin,' she says.
"'And little enough, too,' I says. 'What that man said to me, to say nothing of the bird, was worth a sovereign. But you are a woman, and can't understand that,' I says. 'No,' she says, 'I can't, and lucky for you, or we'd 'a' been in the workhouse before now,' she says.
"And that's how I got the bird."
XXIX
A WONDERFUL STORY OF A MACKEREL
The angler is a mighty spinner of yarns, but no sooner does he set about the telling than I, knowing him of old, and accounting him not an uncommon but an unconscionable liar, begin (as Bacon hath it) "to droop and languish." Nor does the languishing end with the story if I am compelled to sit it out, for in that state I continue for some hours after. But oh! the difference when someone who is not an angler relates a fishing adventure! A plain truthful man who never dined at an anglers' club, nor knows that he who catches, or tries to catch a fish, must tell you something to astonish and fill you with envy and admiration. To a person of this description I am all attention, and however prosaic and even dull the narrative may be, it fills me with delight, and sends me happy to bed and (still chuckling) to a refreshing sleep.