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mate as ever you see; you could suck that mate through a quill.
'And another I knowed,' resumed the killer, after quietly letting a pint of ale run down his throat of its own accord, and setting down the cup with mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised it--'another went out of his mind.'
'How very mournful!' murmured Mrs. Worm.
'Ay, poor thing, 'a did! As clean out of his mind as the cleverest Christian could go. In early life 'a was very melancholy, and never seemed a hopeful pig by no means. 'Twas Andrew Stainer's pig--that's whose pig 'twas.'
'I can mind the pig well enough,' attested John Smith.
'And a pretty little porker 'a was. And you all know Farmer Buckle's sort? Every jack o' em suffer from the rheumatism to this day, owing to a damp sty they lived in when they were striplings, as 'twere.'
'Well, now we'll weigh,' said John.
'If so be he were not so fine, we'd weigh en whole: but as he is, we'll take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?'
'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 neighbour
