"I wish I ’ad, I wish I ’ad," muttered Henwood and shaking a head on which a rim of grey curls surrounded an unreverend tonsure he came slowly back. "Don’t you take no notice of ’er," he said, lifting the mortuary urn out of the window. "I don’t," said the other simply. "I’ve ’ad enough of that." "Where there’s a will there’s a way," said the little undertaker making for the door, "and thiccy urn ’olds just about a pint. I’ll be back in a jiffy." Left to himself, Byron glanced down the shop. He felt curiously at home in it; and this was strange because he could not remember ever to have been there before. At the end was a shed lighted from above and furnished with a carpenter’s bench, trestles and some newly planed boards. A sack of shavings stood in a corner and the air carried a scent of wood. Byron sniffed it appreciatively. It wakened in him a dim memory, a memory so elusive that, try as he might, he could not capture it. The place was familiar, the boards, the smell of wood, but something was lacking, some sound. As he stood, puzzling over the circumstance, Henwood returned with the brimming urn. Setting it carefully on a small black stool or cricket, he turned to the window and, lifting the lid of the baby’s coffin, took from within two rather smeary glasses. "The Lorrd ’elps them as ’elps ’emselves," he said cheerfully. "Missus ’ud never think of looking in thiccy coffin and many a drink I’ve ’ad from’n." The other drank in silent appreciation of the undertaker’s mother-wit. He found it pleasant after the annoyances, the secret fears and elations of the morning, to be in contact with this simple soul, whose one idea was beer and yet more beer. "Not much doing," said Henwood, conversationally, as he returned the glasses to their hiding-place, "but what’s my loss is other people’s gain and, after all, though I do my duty by the dead the livin’ ’as always been more to my taste. What can I do for you, Mr. Byron?" "I want for ’ee to come over to measure my wife for ’er coffin." "My dear life, you don’t mean to say she’s dead?" "Iss, the poor sawl, she died off in her sleep last night and we want for you to come and do the business." The little man considered, his head on one side. "You want ’er buried decent, I s’pose?" So that Sabina was hurried into the grave, Byron was indifferent as to the furnishings of her journey but he knew better than to let this appear. "Of course I do—although I don’t believe in wastin’ so much money to be put’n under the turf, when it could be used for something better. The missus used to think same as I do, she was never one for grandeur." "Well, you got to study other people’s tongues, you know." "If it wasn’t for that," said the countryman with his grim smile, "you’d cut a poor shine, I reckon. Well, what sort of wood be yer goin’ to put in?"