‘I’ve come as soon as I could, sur,’ he replied. ‘My missis never see you till just this minute. You follow me, sur.’

‘Go away,’ I repeated; ‘leave me before I get over the wall, and slay you.’

He seemed surprised.

‘Don’t you want to see the tombs?’ he said.

‘No.’ I answered. ‘I don’t. I want to stop here, leaning up against this gritty old wall. Go away, and don’t disturb me. I am chock full of beautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, because it feels nice and good. Don’t you come fooling about, making me mad, chivying away all my better feelings with this silly tombstone nonsense of yours. Go away, and get somebody to bury you cheap, and I’ll pay half the expense.’

He was bewildered for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, and looked hard at me. I seemed human enough on the outside: he couldn’t make it out.

He said: ‘Yuise a stranger in these parts? You don’t live here?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. You wouldn’t if I did.’

‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you want to see the tombs—graves— folks been buried, you know—coffins!’

‘You are an untruther,’ I replied, getting roused; ‘I do not want to see tombs—not your tombs. Why should I? We have graves of our own, our family has. Why my Uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green cemetery, that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather’s vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee-pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places that I go and revel. I do not want other folk’s. When you yourself are buried, I will come and see yours. That is all that I can do for you.’

He burst into tears. He said that one of the tombs had a bit of stone upon the top of it that had been said by some to be probably part of the remains of the figure of a man, and that another had some words carved upon it that nobody had ever been able to decipher.

I still remained obdurate, and, in broken-hearted tones, he said:

‘Well, won’t you come and see the memorial window?’

I would not even see that, so he fired his last shot. He drew near, and whispered hoarsely:

‘I’ve got a couple of skulls down in the crypt,’ he said; ‘come and see those. Oh, do come and see the skulls! You are a young man out for a holiday, and you want to enjoy yourself. Come and see the skulls!’

Then I turned and fled, and as I sped I heard him calling to me:

‘Oh, come and see the skulls; come back and see the skulls!’

Harris, however, revels in tombs, and graves, and epitaphs, and monumental inscriptions, and the thought of not seeing Mrs Thomas’s grave made him crazy. He said he had looked forward to seeing Mrs Thomas’s grave from the first moment that the trip was proposed—said he wouldn’t have joined if it hadn’t been for the idea of seeing Mrs Thomas’s tomb.

I reminded him of George, and how we had to get the boat up to Shepperton by five o’clock to meet him, and then he went for George. Why was George to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering