“I knew not that I was able to draw when I said so; but I wished to draw when you supposed I was able—I did not like that you should give me credit for what I could not do. It was to please you, sir, that I asked for the pencil.”
“I wish it were as thou statest, Jacob—I wish from my inmost soul that thou wert not guilty.”
“Will you ask Mr Knapps from whom he had these drawings, and at what time? There are a great many of them.”
“Answer, Mr Knapps, to the questions of Jacob Faithful.”
“They have been given to me by the boys at different times during this last month.”
“Well, Mr Knapps, point out the boys who gave them.”
Mr Knapps called out eight or ten boys, who came forward. “Did Barnaby Bracegirdle give you none of them, Mr Knapps?” said I, perceiving that Barnaby was not summoned.
“No,” replied Mr Knapps.
“If you please, sir,” said I to the Dominie, “with respect to the leaf out of my Nepos, the Jacob Faithful was written on it by me on the day that you gave it to me; but the fecit, and the caricature of yourself, is not mine. How it came there I don’t know.”
“Thou hast disproved nothing, Jacob,” replied the Dominie.