job as 'tis in your hands! There, he always was such a clumsy man
indoors."

"Ay, ay; I know you'd tap a hundred beautiful, Ann--I know you would; two
hundred, perhaps. But I can't promise. This is a' old cask, and the
wood's rotted away about the tap-hole. The husbird of a feller Sam
Lawson--that ever I should call'n such, now he's dead and gone, poor
heart!--took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. 'Reub,'
says he--'a always used to call me plain Reub, poor old heart!--'Reub,'
he said, says he, 'that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good as
new. 'Tis a wine-hogshead; the best port-wine in the commonwealth have
been in that there cask; and you shall have en for ten shillens,
Reub,'--'a said, says he--'he's worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if
he's worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood ones
will make en worth thirty shillens of any man's money, if--'"

"I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use afore
I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is sinner
enough not to be cheated. But 'tis like all your family was, so easy to
be deceived."

"That's as true as gospel of this member," said Reuben.

Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and
refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little
Bessy's hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivious to
conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement
of some more brown paper for the broaching operation.

"Ah, who can believe sellers!" said old Michael Mail in a