best,
crowned with a sugar-loaf hat, entered, flung himself into a chair,
and demanded to have a tooth extracted.

"You needn' mind which," he added encouragingly; "they all aches at
times. Only don't let it be more than one, for I can't afford it.
I been countin' up how to lay out my money, an' I got sixpence over;
an' it can't be in beer, because I promised the missus."

The Major assured him that the extraction of a tooth or teeth did not
fall within the sphere of the hospital's provision.

"W'y not?" asked the countryman, and added coaxingly, "Just to pass
the time, now!"

"Not even to pass the time," the Major answered with firmness.

"Very well," said the man resignedly. "If you won't, you won't; but
let's while it away somehow. Give me a black draught."

At rare intervals from three o'clock till five other country
folk dropped in, two or three (once even half a dozen) at a time.
As a show the Hymen Hospital and Museum appeared to have outlived
its vogue. The male visitors, one and all, removed their hats on
entering, and spoke in constrained tones as if in church.
To the Major's relief, no one asked him to recite from the book, and
the questions put to him were of the simplest. A farm maiden from
the country requested that the bust might be wound up.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You don't tell me there isn' no music inside!" the maiden exclaimed.
"What's it _for,_ then?"

With difficulty the Major explained the purpose and also the limits
of statuary. The girl turned to her swain with a _moue_ of disgust.

"It's my belief," she reproached him, "you brought me here out of
stinginess, pretending not to notice when we passed the waxworks,
which is only tuppence, and real murderers with their chests a-rising
an' fallin', as Maria's young man treated her to a last Regatta; an'
a Sleepin' Beauty with a clockwork song inside like distant angels."

But at five o'clock, or thereabouts, arrived no less a personage than
Sir Felix Felix-Williams himself, gallantly escorting a couple of
ladies whom he had piloted through the various rustic sights of the
fair.

"O--oof!" panted Sir Felix, gaining the cool passage and mopping his
brow. "A veritable haven of rest after the dust and din! Hallo, my
good man, are you the caretaker for the day? I don't seem to
recollect your face. . . . Eh? No? Well, show us round, please.
These ladies are curious to know something of our local hero."

The Major, his wooden le