'Look at my clothes; look at my hands! They are the same as yours, and I have as little money in my pocket, I daresay, as any of you.'
'Yes,' growled Jimmy Virtue; 'and you're as ready as any on us to be treated to a pint o' beer.'
'Order, order!' cried some.
'Quite as ready to be treated,' said Mark Mallard, with a frown at Jimmy Virtue, which Jimmy received with a sneer; 'and as ready,' he added, brightening up, 'to treat when my turn comes. We're rowing in the same boat, you and me.' ('I'm 'anged if we are!' growled Jimmy Virtue under his breath.) But Mark Mallard proceeded: 'I'm not being rowed; I'm rowing, as all of you are; and we'll all row together, and show our muscle.'
There was a murmur of approval at this figure of speech; and thus encouraged, the speaker proceeded. The cunning skill with which he mingled familiar matters was enough to mislead any but fairly-balanced minds--royal pensions dating back hundreds of years; manhood suffrage; attempts to interfere with the poor man's beer; justices' justice; the price of meat and coals; one man rolling in his carriage while another starved in rags; bank and other directors who had ruined thousands of poor families living, after exposure, on the fat of the land; the starvation price which capital put upon labour, as instanced in the condition of the agricultural labourers--all these were brought forward and artfully handled to prove into what a deplorable and abominable Slough of Despond the Rights of Man had been trodden by masters and gentlemen.
During the whole time Mark Mallard was speaking, Jimmy Virtue had scarcely once removed his eyes from the man's face; and he had openly expressed his disapproval of the false conclusions drawn by the speaker. At first Mark Mallard had endeavoured to bully Jimmy Virtue into silence, but Jimmy Virtue was the last man in the world to be so bullied, and he expressed his dissent in stronger terms every time the attempt was made. I noticed that Mark Mallard was gradually drawn to observe the close manner in which he was being watched by Jimmy Virtue, and I saw that he grew uneasy and nervous beneath the steady gaze of my eccentric friend. From that time Mark Mallard took no open notice of Jimmy Virtue, but nevertheless looked at him stealthily every now and then. He wound up his most lengthy speech with a peroration in which the Rights of Man and the boast that he, like themselves, was a working man, were the two most conspicuous features; and having resumed his seat amid applause, was wiping his forehead, when Jimmy Virtue rose suddenly, and said in a loud tone that he wanted to ask the Delegate a question or two.
Cries of 'Hear, hear!' and 'No, no!' responded to this announcement; and the latter, on a secret sign from Mark Mallard to his immediate supporters, were swelling into a roar, which would have speedily silenced those who were curious to hear Jimmy Virtue, when Robert Truefit leaped upstanding on to the bench, and cried, in a ringing voice which quelled the tumult,
'Fair play! fair play!'
The appeal, strengthened by the manly manner in which it was made, was taken up and indorsed in different parts of the room. In the midst of this counterbalancing excitement, Robert Truefit leaned down to Jimmy Virtue, and asked hurriedly,
'Jimmy, what is it you are about to do?