"Samuel Edge was cleverer than that," declared Bartley. "And I’ll tell you why: he weren’t content with anything as it stood, but must be altering and changing and pulling down and building up." "A foreigner from Bristol way," said Mr. Moses. "Yes, and the great cleverness of the man undid him. There was an egg-bottomed well to his house, you remember, ’Dumpling’?" "I do remember," admitted Mr. Shillabeer. "One of they egg-bottomed wells the man had." "And though it ran out more than enough water for all his needs, nothing would do but he must cut his egg-bottomed well into a bell-bottomed well. A pushing, clever chap." Reuben took up the narrative. "He went down hisself to do the work; and the sides fell in when he’d under-cut a bit; and they didn’t get the carpse out for three days," he said, gloomily. "Yet an amazing clever man was Edge," concluded Bartley. "Better he’d left well alone, however," ventured Mr. Screech. His jest was greeted with a stare and an uncertain sort of laugh. The folk treat a pun like a conjuring trick: they are dimly conscious that something unusual has happened in conversation, but they cannot say what, and they have no idea how it was done. "If Edge was the cleverest man, which, for my part, I won’t allow," proceeded Moses, "then who was the cleverest woman, I wonder?" "My wife," declared Mr. Shillabeer, instantly. "You must be just to the dead, Charles, for they can’t defend their characters. But I say that my wife was both the largest and best and cleverest woman that ever comed here; and if anybody doubts it, let ’em give chapter and verse." "Nobody does doubt it, ’Dumpling,’" said Bartley, in a soothing voice. "There may be a smart female here and there yet, and there may be a clever maiden or two coming on also; but never did any such grand creature as Mrs. Shillabeer appear among us. Mr. Fogo used to tell about her, and how you won her from a regular army of other men." "True as gospel. There was a good few fighters after her besides me--heavy weights too. She’d never have looked twice at anything less than a fourteen stone man. In fact, to see any male short of thirteen to fourteen stone beside her was a thing to laugh at. ’Twas when I was in training for my fight with the old Tipton--years younger than me he was all the same, that I won her. I was at a little crib out Uxbridge way, and her father had me in hand, and she come out from Saturday to Monday, and us went walking over fields. Then a bull runned at us, and my girl weren’t built for running, but I got her over a stile somehow by the skin of the teeth, and the bull helped me after her from the rear. Horched me in the buttock, and I bled like a pig after. In fact, I saved her life. And she knowed it; and when I offered myself ’twas ’Dumpling’ first and the rest nowhere, like the race-horse." Mr. Maunder spoke.