se of experiments he was
interested in. He wished to determine how far he could spit it out.

This inquiry was a resource against ennui on rainy days and foggy days
and days that were going to clear up later. All these sorts were devised
by the malignity of Providence for the confusion of small boys yearning
to be on active service, redistributing property, obstructing traffic,
or calling attention to personal peculiarities of harmless passers-by.
But it was not so inexhaustible but that cases occurred when those
children got that unsettled and masterful there was no abiding their
racket; and as for Dolly, her brother was making her every bit as bad as
himself. At such times a great resource was to induce Uncle Moses to
tell some experiences of a glorious past, his own. For he had been a
member of the Prize Ring, and had been slapped on the back by Dukes, and
had even been privileged to grasp a Royal hand. He was now an unwieldy
giant, able to get about with a stick when the day was fine, but every
six months less inclined for the effort.

Uncle Moses, when he retired from public life, had put all his winnings,
which were considerable, into a long lease of a pot-house near Golden
Square, where he was well-known and very popular. If, however, there had
been a rock on the premises and he had had all the powers of his
namesake, four-half would have had to run as fast from it as ever did
water from the rock in Horeb, to keep down the thirst of Golden Square.
For Uncle Moses not only refused to take money from old friends who
dwelt in his memory, but weakly gave way to constructive allegations of
long years of comradeship in a happy past, which his powers of
recollection did not enable him to contradict. "Wot, old Moses!--you'll
never come for to go for to say you've forgot old Swipey Sam, jist along
in the Old Kent Road--Easy Shavin' one 'apenny or an arrangement come to
by the week!" Or merely, "Seein' you's as good as old times come alive
again, mate." Suchlike appeals were almost invariable from any customer
who got fair speech of Uncle Moses in his own bar. In his absence these
claims were snuffed out roughly by a prosaic barman--even the most
pathetic ones, such as that of an extinct thimblerigger for whom three
small thimbles and one little pea had ceased for ever, years ago, when
he got his fingers in a sausage-machine. But Uncle Moses was so much his
own barman that this generosity told heavily against his credit; a