'Finger Wet, Finger Dry'

The title is the phrase used by the narrator to promise secrecy as his Uncle Silas tells a very tall tale of an adventure with a woman, hiding in the cellar when her husband arrives, being forgotten by her for a week, and subsisting on stewed nails.

A television adaptation starring Albert Finney was aired in 2003.

Published in:

• John O'London's Weekly (October 9, 1936)
• Story (January 1937)
• The Best Short Stories of 1937 (London: Cape, 1937)
• Something Short and Sweet (1937)
• My Uncle Silas (1939)
• Argosy (March 1942)
• Laughter in a Damp Climate (1963)
• The Complete My Uncle Silas Stories (Bloomsbury ebook, 2016)