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 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.

'He had a head, by all account. And, you see, as the first-born of the
Lickpans have all been Roberts, they've all been Bobs, so the story was
handed down to the present day.'

'Poor Joseph, your second boy, will never be able to bring it out in
company, which is rather unfortunate,' said Mrs. Worm thoughtfully.

''A won't. Yes, grandfer was a clever chap, as ye say; but I knowed a
cleverer. 'Twas my uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-