“That ain’t bad, if it’s true,” said the man in the Mosaic studs, lighting a fresh cigar.
“If!” exclaimed the old man, with a look of excessive contempt. “I suppose,” he added, turning to Lowten, “he’ll say next, that my story about the queer client we had, when I was in an attorney’s office, is not true, either—I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I shan’t venture to say anything at all about it, seeing that I never heard the story,” observed the owner of the Mosaic decorations.
“I wish you would repeat it, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“Ah, do,” said Lowten; “nobody has heard it but me, and I have nearly forgotten it.”
The old man looked round the table, and leered more horribly than ever, as if in triumph, at the attention which was depicted in every face. Then rubbing his chin with his hand, and looking up to the ceiling as if to recall the circumstances to his memory, he began as follows:
THE OLD MAN’S TALE ABOUT THE QUEER CLIENT
“It matters little,” said the old man, “where, or how, I picked up this brief history. If I were to relate it in the order in which it reached me, I should commence in the middle, and when I had arrived at the conclusion, go back for a beginning. It is enough for me to say that some of the circumstances passed before my own eyes. For the remainder I know them to have happened, and there are some persons yet living, who will remember them but too well.
“In the Borough High Street, near St. George’s Church, and on the same side of the way, stands, as most people know, the smallest of our debtors’ prisons, the Marshalsea. Although in later times it has been a very different place from the sink of filth and dirt it once was, even its improved condition holds out but little temptation to the extravagant, or consolation to the improvident. The condemned felon has as good a yard for air and exercise in Newgate, as the insolvent debtor in the Marshalsea Prison.[4]
[4] Better. But this is past, in a better age, and the prison exists no longer.