“Of course, of course,” acquiesced Fullerton, who had not the least idea of what ex officio meant; “but I said it before, and I said it to parson’s own face, just the same as I’m saying it here behind his back, and any man who likes can tell him what I said,” and he looked round defiantly as he spoke; “what I say is, that, whatever Humphrey Bone’s faults may be, he’s as good a land measurer as ever stepped.”
“Yes, he is that,” said a broad farmer-looking man. “Joseph Portlock, you said the very same thing to me yesternight.”
“He’s a first-class penman.”
“Capital,” said Tomlinson.
“And if you know a man with a clearer head for figures,” continued Fullerton, “I should be glad to see him.”
“Capital man at ciphering,” said Smithson, the tailor, whose yearly accounts Humphrey Bone always made up.
“Then, what do you want?” said Fullerton, angrily. “We’ve all got our faults, and if Humphrey Bone does take a little too much sometimes, hasn’t he been master of Lawford school these thirty years?”
The latter part of Jabez Fullerton’s argument was not very clear to his fellow-townsmen assembled at their weekly social meeting at the King’s Head; but they all granted that they had their faults, and Jabez Fullerton waved the spoon with which he had been stirring his brandy-and-water in a very statesmanlike way.
“Look here,” he said, “I never go to church, for chapel’s good enough for me; but all the same I don’t bear enmity against the church, and never would.”
“But you did oppose the church rates, Fullerton,” said Tomlinson, with a chuckle.