“Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty-one.” He looked at it impassively.

“Do you like it?” Connie asked him.

“Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have it done, like.”

He returned to pulling off his boots.

“If you don’t like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your wife would like to have it,” she said.

He looked up at her with a sudden grin.

“She carted off ivrything as was worth taking from th’ouse,” he said. “But she left that !”

“Then why do you keep it? For sentimental reasons?”

“Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It’s bin theer sin’ we come to this place.”