To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts that precious effort of his Muse.  Durdles unfeelingly takes out his two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, alloying them with stone-grit.

‘This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sapsea?’

‘The Inscription.  Yes.’  Mr. Sapsea waits for its effect on a common mind.

‘It’ll come in to a eighth of a inch,’ says Durdles.  ’Your servant, Mr. Jasper.  Hope I see you well.’

‘How are you Durdles?’

’I’ve got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jasper, but that I must expect.’

‘You mean the Rheumatism,’ says Sapsea, in a sharp tone. (He is nettled by having his composition so mechanically received.)

’No, I don’t.  I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism.  It’s another sort from Rheumatism.  Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means.  You get among them Tombs afore it’s well light on a winter morning, and keep on, as the Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the days of your life, and you’ll know what Durdles means.’

‘It is a bitter cold place,’ Mr. Jasper assents, with an antipathetic shiver.

’And if it’s bitter cold for you, up in the chancel, with a lot of live breath smoking out about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, down in the crypt among the earthy damps there, and the dead breath of the old ‘uns,’ returns that individual, ’Durdles leaves you to judge.—­Is this to be put in hand at once, Mr. Sapsea?’

Mr. Sapsea, with an Author’s anxiety to rush into publication, replies that it cannot be out of hand too soon.

‘You had better let me have the key then,’ says Durdles.

‘Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!’

’Durdles knows where it’s to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no man better.  Ask ‘ere a man in Cloisterham whether Durdles knows his work.’

Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks an iron safe let into the wall, and takes from it another key.

’When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no matter where, inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all round, and see that his work is a-doing him credit,’ Durdles explains, doggedly.

The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being a large one, he slips his two-foot rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers made for it, and deliberately opens his flannel coat, and opens the mouth of a large breast-pocket within it before taking the key to place it in that repository.

‘Why, Durdles!’ exclaims Jasper, looking on amused, ’you are undermined with pockets!’

’And I carries weight in ’em too, Mr. Jasper.  Feel those!’ producing two other large keys.

’Hand me Mr. Sapsea’s likewise.  Surely this is the heaviest of the three.’

’You’ll find ’em much of a muchness, I expect,’ says Durdles.  ’They all belong to monuments.  They all open Durdles’s work.  Durdles keeps the keys of his work mostly.  Not that they’re much used.’