Who Snig was no one knows, for the cottage was built "nigh up on three ’undred year ago." The vicar, who is something of an antiquarian, says even earlier. In the memory of man "Snig’s" has never been bought, it is always "left," and the heritor, so far, has never been willing to sell, though, as Mrs. Cushion remarked scornfully, "Artises an’ sich do often come after it, an’ one, an American gentleman ’e was, wanted to buy ’un and build out at the back all over my bit o’ garden and kip the old ’ouse just as a’ be for a curiositee. I let ’im talk, but, bless you, my uncle left it to me in ’is will and I shall leave it the same in mine; and so it’ll always be, so long as there’s one stone to another. ’Ouses is ’ouses in these parts." Solid and grey and gabled, the little six-roomed house still stood in its trim garden, outwardly the same as when the untraceable Snig first named it. Inside, its furniture was a jumble of periods, but there were no aspidistras, nor did any ornament cling to a plush bracket on the walls. Jacob and Rachel were there, and the infant Samuel, and on either side of the clock was a red-and-white china spaniel and a Toby jug. Mrs. Cushion frankly owned that she had preferred her own "bits of things" to some of her uncle’s that were there when she came. To make room for her mahogany sideboard she had sold an old oak chest to the American gentleman, who was glad to give a good price for it. "A hoak chest," said Mrs. Cushion, "is an on’andy thing to keep the gentlemen’s beverages in. One always ’as to lift everything off the top to get inside. Now, my sideboard ’as doors and shelves all convenient one side, and a reg’lar cellar for beverages on the other. Not but as what folks ’ud be much better without them." Mrs. Cushion was, herself, strong for the temperance cause, but she was too tolerant a woman and too excellent a landlady to do more than hint her disapproval. And by calling every form of alcohol "a beverage" I’m certain she felt that in some inexplicable way she so rendered it more or less innocuous. She never spoke of either wines or spirits by their names, only collectively as "beverages." And I speedily learned that although indulgence in such pleasures of the table was to be tolerated, even condoned, in men, women were expected to be of sterner stuff; and I believe my modest half-flagon of Burgundy, reposing in meek solitude in all the roomy glory of the "cellaret," grieved her far more than when that same cellaret was filled by the varied and much stronger "beverages" of her male guests. Yet she never failed to remind me when there was only, as she put it, "one more dose," that I might order a fresh supply from the grocer.