“Mind your own business,” returned Peace.
“Vell, there aint no call to be humpy about the matter. I spoke civilly enough—didn’t I?”
“You are too fast for my book,” said Peace. “You’re like a sheep’s head—all jaw.”
“Oh, carry me out and bury me dacent, but you’re as good as a play, you are, and no flies,” said the pickpocket. “Blest if you couldn’t make a fortin’ as a mummer; but I say, old man, I ’xpect you’ll get it rather ’ot. What made yer fire yer pop-gun at a ‘bobby,’ eh?”
“Mind your own business, and don’t interfere with me.”
“Vell, I’m sorry for yer, and I hopes as how——”
“Hold your tongue, you fool,” interrupted our hero. “You’ll have enough to do to prove your innocence, I’m thinking.”
“Vell, now, we agree this once. I’m of the same ’pinion. They’ll be down upon me as dead as a hammer. I’ll lay yer half a bull that they give me two ‘stretch.’ I mek up my mind to that there, but you—vell, I don’t know how it ’ill go vith you, old un; but yer had a pretty smart tussle with yer bobby—didn’t you?”
“Let the gentleman be,” said the other prisoner, who, like “Cakey,” was hardly out of his teens. “Yer sees as how he don’t like it. I’m ashamed on yer. This isn’t a time for chaff—is it?”
“I don’t know that it is, but it’s better than sitting like a set of mutes—aint it? It’s enough to give a fellow the hump to be sitting still a waitin’ to be placed in the dock.”