“Well, as a matter of fact, I shall be very glad to accept the offer,” said Roden. “My pony is perhaps a little in want of a rest. Upon my word, though, Mr Van Stolz, there may be more good-natured people in the world than yourself, but with some experience of that orb I don’t believe there are.”
“Pooh, pooh!” laughed the genial little man, not ill-pleased with such a spontaneous outburst on the part of his self-contained, cynical, and generally somewhat unpopular assistant. “Why, man, you’d do such a trifle as that for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Rather. But I’ll be hanged if I would for the whole of Doppersdorp.”
“Ha! ha! But poor old Doppersdorp isn’t such a bad place. There are a lot of people in it who are damn sweeps; but I can always pull with everybody—even damn sweeps. When I’m on the Bench it’s another thing. I don’t care for anybody then. But when you’ve got to be in a place, Musgrave, you may as well make the best of it.”
“And that I flatter myself I do. What with yourselves, Mr Van Stolz, and the Suffields, and one or or two more, I am not particularly discontented with the place.”
“Ha! ha! And one or two more!” laughed the magistrate mischievously. “What did the wife say when you first came up here, Musgrave? And wasn’t she right? Own up, now. When is it to come off?”
From anybody else this sort of chaff would have more than annoyed Roden—indeed, hardly anybody else would have ventured upon it with him. Coming from whom it did, he merely laughed, and said that, if for no other reason, he did not see how anything real or imaginary could “come off,” in the light of the munificent rate of pay wherewith a paternal Government saw fit to remunerate the labours of the junior members of its judicial service. Then he turned the conversation into other channels, and thus, alternately subsiding into silence as the nature of their work required, and smoking a pipe or two and narrating an anecdote as something suggested one to either, this happily assorted brace of officials got through the first half of an afternoon, until the tread of a pair of heavy boots on the boarded floor of the Court-room without was heard drawing near.
“Some confounded Boer, I suppose, who’ll extend a clammy paw, and put his hat on the ground and spit five times, preparatory to beginning some outrageous lie,” growled Roden, thinking it was about time to take himself off.
“May I come in?” sang out a voice.
“Hallo! It’s Suffield. Come in, Suffield!” cried the magistrate, jumping up.