“Not he,” said Crummins, and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the tide of narration.

He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then looked abashed at Miss.

Crickledon saw his dilemma.  “Say what’s uppermost, Ned; never mind how you says it.  English is English.  Mr. Tinman sent for you to take the glass away, now, did n’t he?”

“He did,” said Crummins.

“And you went to him.”

“Ay, that I did.”

“And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your back”

“He did that.”

“That’s all plain sailing.  Had he bought the glass?”

“No, he had n’t bought it.  He’d hired it.”

As when upon an enforced visit to the dentist, people have had one tooth out, the remaining offenders are more willingly submitted to the operation, insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins, who had shrunk from speech, now volunteered whole sentences in succession, and how important they were deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and especially Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations, before they themselves were drawn into the strong current of interest.

And this was the matter:  Tinman had hired the glass for three days.  Latish, on the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark, he had despatched imperative orders to Phippun and Company to take the glass out of his house on the spot.  And why?  Because, as he maintained, there was a fault in the glass causing an incongruous and absurd reflection; and he was at that moment awaiting the arrival of another chiwal-glass.

“Cut along, Ned,” said Crickledon.

“What the deuce does he want with a chiwal-glass at all?” cried Mr. Smith, endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to the narrator that he must “hark back,” which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a chasm hindward.  Happily his brain had seized a picture: 

“Mr. Tinman, he’s a-standin’ in his best Court suit.”

Mr. Tinmau’s old schoolmate gave a jump; and no wonder.

“Standing?” he cried; and as the act of standing was really not extraordinary, he fixed upon the suit:  “Court?”

“So Mrs. Cavely told me, it was what he was standin’ in, and as I found ’m I left ’m,” said Crummins.

“He’s standing in it now?” said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.

Crummins doggedly repeated the statement.  Many would have ornamented it in the repetition, but he was for bare flat truth.

“He must be precious proud of having a Court suit,” said Mr. Smith, and gazed at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though she was impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon’s lodgings.

“Oh! there’s where it is?” interjected the carpenter, with a funny frown at a low word from Ned Crummins.  “Practicing, is he?  Mr. Tinman’s practicing before the glass preparatory to his going to the palace in London.”