The House on the Beach | Page 7

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."
"He gave me a shillin'," said Crummins.
Crickledon comprehended him immediately. "We sha'n't speak about it,
Ned."
What did you see? was thus cautiously suggested.
The shilling was on Crummins' tongue to check his betrayal of the
secret scene. But remembering that he had only witnessed it by
accident, and that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into his
confidence, he thrust his hand down his pocket to finger the
crown-piece lying in fellowship with the coin it multiplied five times,
and was inspired to think himself at liberty to say: "All I saw was when
the door opened. Not the house-door. It was the parlour-door. I saw him
walk up to the glass, and walk back from the glass. And when he'd got
up to the glass he bowed, he did, and he went back'ards just so."
Doubtless the presence of a lady was the active agent that prevented

Crummins from doubling his body entirely, and giving more than a
rapid indication of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before the
glass. But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque, and though it was
received with becoming sobriety by the men in the carpenter's shop,
Annette plucked at her father's arm.
She could not get him to depart. That picture of his old schoolmate
Martin Tinman practicing before a chiwal glass to present himself at
the palace in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian
intelligence.
"What right has he got to go to Court?" Mr. Van Diemen Smith
inquired, like the foreigner he had become through exile.
"Mr. Tinman's bailiff of the town," said Crickledon.
"And what was his objection to that glass I smashed?"
"He's rather an irritable gentleman," Crickledon murmured, and turned
to Crummins.
Crummins growled: "He said it was misty, and gave him a twist."
"What a big fool he must be! eh?" Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and
the other faces for the verdict of Tinman's townsmen upon his
character.
They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.
"He's no fool," said Crickledon.
Another shook his head. "Sharp at a bargain."
"That he be," said the chorus.
Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman would probably end by
buying up half the town.
"Then," said Mr. Smith, "he can afford to pay half the money for that

glass, and pay he shall."
A serious view of the recent catastrophe was presented by his
declaration.
In the midst of a colloquy regarding the cost of the glass, during which
it began to be seen by Mr. Tinman's townsmen that there was laughing-
stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed by Crummins, if they
postponed a bit their right to the laugh and took it in