“Where did you get the handkerchief, Walpole?” he whispered; “you ought to hang that out for an auction flag, and sell out your cases.”
Horace stuffed it back in his pocket.
“You’d be glad enough to buy some of them, if you got the show,” he returned; but the opportunity for a prolonged contest of wit was cut short. The judge was folding his letter, and the nasal counsel, having finished his reading, stood gazing in doubt and trepidation at the bench, and asking himself why his Honor had not passed on each point as presented. He found out.
“Are you prepared to submit those requests in writing?” demanded Gillespie, J., sharply and suddenly. He knew well enough that that poor little nasal, nervous junior counsel would never have trusted himself to speak ten consecutive sentences in court without having every word on paper before him.
“Ye-yes,” the counsel stammered, and handed up his careful manuscript.
“I will examine these to-night,” said his Honor, and, apparently, he made an endorsement on the papers. He was really writing the address on the envelope of his letter. Then there was a stir, and a conversation between the judge and two or three lawyers, all at once, which was stopped when his Honor gave an Olympian nod to the clerk.
The crier arose.
“He’ ye! he’ ye! he’ ye!” he shouted with perfunctory vigor. “Wah—wah—wah!” the high ceiling slapped back at him; and he declaimed, on one note, a brief address to “Awperns han bins” in that court, of which nothing was comprehensible save the words “Monday next at eleven o’clock.” And then the court collectively rose, and individually put on hats for the most part of the sort called queer.
All the people were chattering in low voices; chairs were moved noisily, and the slumbering juror opened his weary eyes and troubled himself with an uncalled-for effort to look as though he had been awake all the time and didn’t like the way things were going, at all. Horace got from the clerk the papers for which he had been waiting, and was passing out, when his Honor saw him and hailed him with an expressive grunt.
Gillespie, J., looked over his spectacles at Horace.