"I do not understand it, Mr. Peach," said the distressed lady; "pray explain it to me."
"Bailiff!" replied the old man, pointing to the officer in an introductory manner; "come to seize furniture—some of your fellow creatures:" and then, mimicking the manners of the official, he wound up with the same exclamation—"that's all."
"That's all, ay, and enough too!" mumbled Ben as he made the room echo with rattling the poker in the grate; "I ounly wish my lady 'ud give the word, I'm blessed if it should be all; I'd larn 'em to seize furniture; and it arn't best for their health that they clap a flipper upon it whilst I'm here."
"Go to sea," muttered Mr. Unity Peach. "Work for your living—don't lazy away your time here!"
"I tell you what it is, ould genelman," exclaimed Ben, all the feelings of the tar aroused within his breast. "You're an oncantankerous scamp with your spiteful tongue. But bless you, my lady, ounly say the word and I'll clear the decks of the whole boiling of 'em afore you can look round you;" and the seaman flourished the poker in a menacing attitude at the officer and his follower, but the next instant he felt his arm restrained as if it had been fixed in the gripe of a blacksmith's vice, and by his side stood Mr. Unity Peach.
"Put that poker down," said the old man in a tone of command as he grasped the seaman's wrist; "obey the laws."
"All werry right, sir," uttered the sheriff's officer; "not as I'm afear'd of being attackted, but arter all there's nothing like obeying the law, and it shows as you're a man of sense. I must do my dooty, howsomever unpleasant. There's the writ, ma'am."
"At whose suit?" demanded Mr. Peach, who quietly took the weapon from Ben's hand, and replaced it within the fender.
"At the suit of Muster Jocelyn Brady," replied the officer, "attorney-at-law, Lincoln's Inn. Debt and costs one hundred and seventeen pounds, six shillings, and eightpence."
"The villain!" uttered a voice, half suppressed, from some part of the room, but from whom it proceeded it would have been difficult to say.