But Dolly came to the end of even the unsuccessful fishermen. Just as they reached home, however, she produced her convincing incident, all that preceded it having evidently been introduction pure and simple. "And there was a man saided fings to Micky, and saided fings to Dave, and saided fings to...." Here Dolly stuttered, became confused, and ended up weakly: "No, he didn't saided no fings, to no one else." A little _finesse_ was necessary to land the _elixir vitae_ on the parlour chimney-piece, and Dolly on the hearthrug. Then Uncle Mo sat down in his own chair to recover breath, saying in the course of a moment:--"And what did the man say to Dave, and what did he say to young Sparrowgrass?" He did not suppose that "the man" was a person capable of identification; he was an unknown unit, but good to talk about. "He saided Mrs. Picture." Dolly placed the subject she proposed to treat broadly before her audience, with a view to its careful analysis at leisure. "What on 'arth did he say Mrs. Picture for? _He_ don't know Mrs. Picture." The present tense used here acknowledged the man's authenticity, and encouraged the little maid--three and three-quarters, you know!--to further testimony. It came fairly fluently, considering the witness's recent acquisition of the English language. "He doos know Mrs. Picture, ass he doos, and he saided Mrs. Picture to Micky, ass he did." This was plenty for a time, and during that time the witness could go on nodding with her eyes wide open, to present the subject lapsing, for she had found out already how slippery grown-up people are in argument. Great force was added by her curls, which lent themselves to flapping backwards and forwards as she nodded. It was impossible to resist such evidence, outwardly at least, and Uncle Mo appeared to accept it. "Then the man said Mrs. Picture to Dave," said he. "And Dave told it on to you, was that it?" He added, for the general good of morality:--"_You're_ a nice lot of young Pickles!" But this stopped the nodding, which changed suddenly to a negative shake, of great decision. "The man never saided nuffint to Dave, no he didn't."