breath the triumphal
entrance of the piano. The carman set it tenderly on the narrow
footpath, while P. C. Evans, stooping low, examined it at all points, and
Mrs. Evans, raising the lid, struck a few careless chords.

"Showing off," explained Mrs. Grummit, with a half turn; "and she's got
fingers like carrots."

"It's a disgrace to Mulberry Gardens to 'ave a copper come and live in
it," said the indignant Grummit; "and to come and live next to me!--
that's what I can't get over. To come and live next door to a man wot
has been fined twice, and both times wrong. Why, for two pins I'd go in
and smash 'is pianner first and 'im after it. He won't live 'ere long,
you take my word for it."

"Why not?" inquired his wife.

"Why?" repeated Mr. Grummit. "Why? Why, becos I'll make the place too
'ot to hold him. Ain't there enough houses in Tunwich without 'im
a-coming and living next door to me?"

For a whole week the brain concealed in Mr. Grummit's bullet-shaped head
worked in vain, and his temper got correspondingly bad. The day after
the Evans' arrival he had found his yard littered with tins which he
recognized as old acquaintances, and since that time they had travelled
backwards and forwards with monotonous regularity. They sometimes made
as many as three journeys a day, and on one occasion the heavens opened
to drop a battered tin bucket on the back of Mr. Grummit as he was tying
his bootlace. Five minutes later he spoke of the outrage to Mr. Evans,
who had come out to admire the sunset.

"I heard something fall," said the constable, eyeing the pail curiously.

"You threw it," said Mr. Grummit, breathing furiously.

"Me? Nonsense," said the other, easily. "I was having tea in the
parlour with my wife and my mother-in-law, and my brother Joe and his
young lady."

"Any more of 'em?" demanded the hapless Mr. Grummit, aghast at this list
of witnesses for an alibi.

"It ain't a bad pail, if you look at it properly," said the constable.
"I should keep it if I was you; unless the owner offers a reward for it.
It'll hold enough water for your wants."

Mr. Grummit flung indoors and, after wasting some time concocting
impossible measures of retaliation with his sympathetic partner, went off
to discuss affairs with his intimates at the _Bricklayers' Arms_. The
company, although unanimously agreeing that Mr. Evans ought to be boiled,
were miserably deficient in ideas as to the means by which such a
desirabl