“‘Tisn’ a ‘’oo,’ ’tis an ‘it’:  bein’ an expression I got off an Extension Lecturer they had down to Bodmin, one time.  I’d a great hankerin’, in those days, to measure six foot two in my socks afore I finished growin’, and I signed on for his lectures in that hope.  With a man callin’ his-self by that name and advertisin’ as he’d lecture on ‘Measure for Measure,’ I thought I’d a little bit of all right.  But he ran right off the rails an’ chatted away about the rummiest things, such as theatricals.  I forget what switched ’en off an’ on to that partic’lar line:  but I well remember his openin’ remark.  He said, ’To measure the true stature of a great man we must go down to the true roots.  A certain Jane is bound to overtake us if we dig too long among the common ’taturs with their un-stopp’d lines an’ weak endings and this or that defective early quest.  Oh! all profitable, no doubt, an’ worth cultivatin’ so long as we do not look for taste.’  When I woke up at the end ’twas with these words printed in mind same as they’ve remained.  But I couldn’ figure out how this here Jane got mixed up in the diet.  So, bein’ of a practical mind then, in my ’teens, same as I be to-day, I stopped behind and asked him—­takin’ care to look bright and intelligent—­who might be this Jane he’d allooded to.  If you’ll believe me, it turned out to be no person at all, but a way the gentry have of sayin’ they’re uncomfortable; same as, through some writin’ chap or other, all the papers was talkin’ of your belly as your Little Mary.”

“Mine?”

“When I say ‘yours,’ o’ course I mean to say ’ours’—­that’s to say, every one’s.”  Rat-it-all made a semicircular sweep of the hand in front of his person.

“Something of a liberty, I should say, however many you include.  What I object to in these newspapers is the publicity. . . .  But, if you ask my opinion, that Extension fellow made a start with pullin’ your leg.”

“You’re wrong, then.  For I tried the expression ’pon Parson Steele only two days ago.  ‘This here war, sir,’ I took occasion to say, ‘fairly gives me the Jane.’  He reckernised the word at once, an’ lugged out his note-book.  ‘Do you know, constable,’ says he, ‘that you’re talkin’ French, an’ it’s highly interestin’?’ ’I make no doubt as ‘twould be, sir,’ says I, ’if I was to hold on with it.’  ‘You don’t understand,’ says he.  ‘These Gallic turns o’ speech’—­which, ‘tween you an’ me, I’d always thought o’ Gallic as a kind of acid—­’these Gallic turns o’ speech,’ says he, ‘be engagin’ the attention of learned men to such an extent that I think o’ writin’ a paper upon ’em myself,’ says he, ’for the Royal Institution o’ Cornwall at their next Summer Meetin’.’ . . .  I was considerably flattered, as you may well understand. . . .  But that brings me back to my point.  Parsons an’ constables, as I see the matter, be men set apart, an’ lonely.  So when I reads ’pon the paper that this here war has made us all brothers, it strikes HOME, an’ I feel inclined to stop an’ pass the time o’ day with anybody.  I don’t care who he may be.”