Mr. Smith’s Chatter 
The son said, “I went to a rough-musicking 
once. *Tain’t half bad fun, I can tell you... . 
When they rough-musicked old Jim Bones.” 
“Ah, old Jim Bones. You knowed him, 
didn’t you?”” Mr. Smith addressed me. And 
since I couldn’t remember Mr. Bones, he ex- 
plained: “‘ He wa’n’t much of a lot. He was 
Mrs. So-and-so’s father-in-law. . . . Not that 
that makes him any the better—nor she any the 
worse, if it comes to that.” 
I assented. ‘‘ That’s the sort of thing nobody 
ae help. But what did they rough-music him 
ofr. 
“Why, ’twas like this. He lived in one of 
a pair of cottages up at » you know. And in 
the other was his sister’s husband, that had married 
again. ‘They never took to his second wife— 
never got on together. And as soon as the old 
man died, Jim Bones or some of his household 
was in there, moving things out and taking ’em 
away, before even he was buried. They began 
to pull the house to pieces while he lay there in 
his coffin.” 
““T see. And so the people rough-musicked 
him. Serve him right. Did he come out to’em?”’ 
The son said, “No. He never came out. 
Still, ’twa’n’t half bad fun, for all that.” 
But his father commented, “‘ Ah, they ought 
to come out. Not like old Hole did, though.” 
129 I 
