“Read a thimble!” echoed Snitchey. “What are you talking about, young woman?”
Clemency nodded. “And a nutmeg-grater.”
“Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!” said Snitchey, staring at her.
“If possessed of any property,” stipulated Craggs.
Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.
“Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!” said Snitchey. “Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,” he muttered, with a supercilious glance. “And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?”
“I a’n’t married, Mister,” observed Clemency.
“Well, Newcome. Will that do?” said the lawyer. “What does the thimble say, Newcome?”
How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there,—and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to hold,—is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.
“That’s the thimble, is it, young woman?” said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. “And what does the thimble say?”