box that should
be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used to hand en round at wedding
parties, christenings, funerals, and in other jolly company, and let 'em
try their skill. This extraordinary snuff-box had a spring behind that
would push in and out--a hinge where seemed to be the cover; a slide at
the end, a screw in front, and knobs and queer notches everywhere. One
man would try the spring, another would try the screw, another would
try the slide; but try as they would, the box wouldn't open. And they
couldn't open en, and they didn't open en. Now what might you think was
the secret of that box?'

All put on an expression that their united thoughts were inadequate to
the occasion.

'Why the box wouldn't open at all. 'A were made not to open, and ye
might have tried till the end of Revelations, 'twould have been as
naught, for the box were glued all round.'

'A very deep man to have made such a box.'

'Yes. 'Twas like uncle Levi all over.'

''Twas. I can mind the man very well. Tallest man ever I seed.'

''A was so. He never slept upon a bedstead after he growed up a hard
boy-chap--never could get one long enough. When 'a lived in that little
small house by the pond, he used to have to leave open his chamber door
every night at going to his bed, and let his feet poke out upon the
landing.'

'He's dead and gone now, nevertheless, poor man, as we all shall,'
observed Worm, to fill the pause which followed the conclusion of Robert
Lickpan's speech.

The weighing and cutting up was pursued amid an animated discourse on
Stephen's travels; and at the finish, the first-fruits of the day's
slaughter, fried in onions, were then turned from the pan into a dish
on the table, each piece steaming and hissing till it reached their very
mouths.

It must be owned that the gentlemanly son of the house looked rather
out of place in the course of this operation. Nor was his mind
quite philosophic enough to allow him to be comfortable with these
old-established persons, his father's friends. He had never lived long
at home--scarcely at all since his childhood. The presence of William
Worm was the most awkward feature of the case, for, though Worm had left
the house of Mr. Swancourt, the being hand-in-glove with a ci-devant
servitor reminded Stephen too forcibly of the vicar's classification
of himself before he went from England. Mrs. Smith was conscious of
the defect in her arrangements which had brought about the undesi