"Well, you can't do wrong with either. But"--Mr Philp glanced back across the roadway and lowered his voice--"I'd like to warn you o' one thing. I don't know no unhandier houses for gettin' out a corpse. There's a turn at the foot o' the stairs; most awk'ard." "I reckon," said Captain Cai cheerfully, "'Bias an' me'll leave that to them as it concerns. But, man! what a turn you've a-got for funerals!" "They be the breath o' life to me," Mr Philp confessed, and paused for a moment's thought. "Tell 'ee what we'll do: you shall come with me down to Fore Street an' buy yourself a new hat at Shake Benny's: 'tis on your way to Rilla Farm. There in the shop you can hand me over the one you're wearin', and Shake can send mine home in a bandbox." He twinkled cunningly. "I shall be wantin' a bandbox, an' that gets me one cost-free." The man was inexorable. Captain Cai gave up resistance, and the pair descended the hill together towards Mr Benny's shop. Young Mr Benny, "S. Benny, Gents' Outfitter," had suffered the misfortune to be christened Shakespeare without inheriting any of the literary aspirations to which that name bore witness. It was, in any event, a difficult name to live up to, and so incongruous with this youth in particular that, as he grew up, his acquaintances abbreviated it by consent to Shake; and, again, when, after serving an apprenticeship with a pushing firm in Exeter, he returned to open a haberdashery shop in his native town, it had been reduced, for business purposes, to a bare initial. But it is hard to escape heredity. Albeit to young Mr Benny pure literature made no appeal, and had even been summarised by him as "footle," in the business of advertising he developed a curious literary twist. He could not exhibit a new line of goods without inventing an arresting set of labels for it; and upon these labels (executed with his own hands in water-colour upon cardboard) he let play a fancy almost Asiatic. Not content with mere description, such as "_Neck-wear in Up-to-date Helios_" or "_Braces, Indispensable_," he assailed the coy purchaser with appeals frankly personal, such as "_You passed us Yesterday, but We Hit you this time_," or (of pyjamas) "_What! You don't Tell us You Go to Bed like your Grandfather_," or (of a collar) "_If you Admire Lord Rosebery, Now is Your Time_." Captain Cai wanted a hat. "I be just returned from foreign," he explained; "and this here head-gear o' mine--" Young Mr Benny smiled with a smile that deprecated his being drawn into criticism. "We keep ahead of the Germans yet, sir,--in some respects. Is it Captain Hocken I have the pleasure of addressin'?" "Now, how did he know that?" Captain Cai murmured. "Why, by your hat," answered Mr Philp with readiness.