'There you are,' he said, handing the modem screw to Rummins. 'Take a look at that. Notice the exact evenness of the spiral? See it? Of course you do. It's just a cheap common little screw you yourself could buy today in any ironmonger's in the country.'
The screw was handed round from the one to the other, each examining it carefully. Even Rummins was impressed now.
Mr Boggis put the screwdriver back in his pocket together with the fine hand-cut screw that he'd taken from the commode, and then he turned and walked slowly past the three men towards the door.
'My dear friends,' he said, pausing at the entrance to the kitchen, 'it was so good of you to let me peep inside your little home-so kind. I do hope I haven't been a terrible old bore.'
Rummins glanced up from examining the screw. 'You didn't tell us what you were going to offer,' he said.
'Ah,' Mr Boggis said. 'That's quite right. I didn't, did I? Well, to tell you the honest truth, I think it's all a bit too much trouble. I think I'll leave it.'
'How much would you give?'
'You mean that you really wish to part with it?'
'I didn't say I wished to part with it. I asked you how much.'
Mr Boggis looked across at the commode, and he laid his head first to one side, then to the other, and he frowned, and pushed out his lips, and shrugged his shoulders, and gave a little scornful wave of the hand as though to say the thing was hardly worth thinking about really, was it?
'Shall we say…ten pounds. I think that Would be fair.'
'Ten pounds!' Rummins cried. 'Don't be so ridiculous, Parson, please!'
'It's worth more'n that for firewood!' Claud said, disgusted.
'Look here at the bill!' Rummins went on, stabbing that precious document so fiercely with his dirty fore- finger that Mr Boggis became alarmed. 'It tells you exactly what it cost! Eightyseven pounds! And that's when it was new. Now it's antique it's worth double!'
'If you'll pardon me, no, sir, it's not. It's a second-hand reproduction. But I'll tell you what, my friend-I'm being rather reckless, I can't help it-I'll go up as high as fifteen pounds. How's that?'
'Make it fifty,' Rummins said.
A delicious little quiver like needles ran all the way down the back of Mr Boggis's legs and then under the soles of his feet. He had it now. It was his. No question about that. But the habit of buying cheap, as cheap as it was humanly possible to buy, acquired by years of necessity and practice, was too strong in him now to permit him to give in so easily.
'My dear man,' he whispered softly, 'I only want the legs. Possibly I could find some use for the drawers later on, but the rest of it, the carcass itself, as your friend so rightly said; it's firewood, that's all.'
'Make it thirty-five,' Rummins said.
'I couldn't sir, I couldn't! It's not worth it. And I simply mustn't allow myself to haggle like this about a price. It's all wrong. I'll make you one final offer, and then I must go. Twenty pounds.'
'I'll take it,' Rummins snapped. 'It's yours.'
'Oh dear,' Mr Boggis said, clasping his hands. 'There I go again. I should never have started this in the first place.'
'You can't back out now, Parson. A deal's a deal.'
'Yes, yes, I know.'
'How're you going to take it?'
'Well, let me see. Perhaps if I were to drive my car up into the yard, you gentlemen would be kind enough to help me load it?'
'In a car? This thing'll never go in a car! You'll need a truck for this!'
'I don't think so. Anyway, we'll see. My car's on the road. I'll be back in a jiffy. We'll manage it somehow, I'm sure.'
Mr Boggis walked out into the yard and through the gate and then down the long track that led across the field towards the road. He found himself giggling quite uncontrollably, and there was a feeling inside him as though hundreds and hundreds of tiny bubbles were rising up from his stomach and bursting merrily in the top of his head, like sparkling-water. All the buttercups in the field were suddenly turning into golden sovereigns, glistening in the sunlight. The ground was littered with them, and he swung off the track on to the grass so that he could walk among them and tread on them and hear the little metallic tinkle they made as he kicked them around with his toes. He was finding it difficult to stop himself from breaking into a run. But clergymen never run; they walk Slowly. Walk slowly, Boggis. Keep calm, Boggis.
There's no hurry now. The commode is yours! Yours for twenty pounds, and it's worth fifteen or twenty thousand! The Boggis Commode! In ten minutes it'll be loaded into your car-it'll go in easily and you'll be driving back to London and singing all the way! Mr Boggis driving the Boggis Commode home in the Boggis car. Historic occasion. What wouldn't a newspaperman give to get a picture of that! Should he arrange it? Perhaps he should. Wait and see. Oh, glorious day! Oh, lovely sunny summer day! Oh, glory be!
Back in the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, 'Fancy that old bastard giving twenty pound for a load of junk like this.'
'You did very nicely, Mr Rummins,' Claud told him. 'You think he'll pay you?'
'We don't put it in the car till he do.'
'And what if it won't go in the car?' Claud asked. 'You know what I think, Mr Rummins? You want my honest opinion? I think the bloody thing's too big to go in the car. And then what happens? Then he's going to say to hell with it and just drive off without it and you'll never see him again. Nor the money either. He didn't seem all that keen on having it, you know.'
Rummins paused to consider this new and rather alarming prospect.
'How can a thing like that possibly go in a car?' Claud went on relentlessly. 'A parson never has a big car anyway. You ever seen a parson with a big car, Mr Rummins?'
'Can't say I have.'
'Exactly! Arid now listen to me. I've got an idea. He told us, didn't he, that it was only the legs he was wanting. Right? So all we've got to do is to cut 'em off quick right here on the spot before he comes back, then it'll be sure to go in the car. All we're doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off himself when he gets home. How about it, Mr Rummins?' Claud's flat bovine face glimmered with a mawkish pride.
'It's not such a bad idea at that,' Rummins said, looking at the commode. 'In fact it's a bloody good idea. Come on then, we'll have to hurry. You and Bert carry it out into the yard. I'll get the saw. Take the drawers out first.'
Within a couple of minutes, Claud and Ben had carried the commode outside and had laid it upside down in the yard amidst the chicken droppings and cow dung and mud. In the distance, half-way across the field, they could see a small black figure striding along the path towards the road. They paused to watch. There was something rather comical about the way in which this figure was conducting itself. Every now and again it would break into a trot, then it did a kind of hop, skip, and jump, and once it seemed as though the sound of a cheerful song came rippling faintly to them from across the meadow.
'I reckon he's barmy,' Claud said, and Bert grinned darkly, rolling his misty eye slowly round in its socket.
Rummins came waddling over from the shed, squat and froglike, carrying a long saw. Claud took the saw away from him and went to work.
'Cut 'em close,' Rummins said. 'Don't forget he's going to use 'em on another table.'
The mahogany was hard and very dry, and as Claud worked, a fine red dust sprayed out from the edge of the saw and fell softly to the ground. One by one, the legs came off, and when they were all severed, Bert stooped down and arranged them carefully in a row.
Claud stepped back to survey the results of his labour. There was a longish pause.
'Just let me ask you one question, Mr Rummins,' he said slowly. 'Even now, could you put that enormous thing into the back of a car?'
'Not unless it was a van.'
'Correct!' Claud cried. 'And parsons don't have vans, you know. All they've got usually is piddling little Morris
