"Come, tell us," exclaimed a dozen voices.
"No—no—I can't—I should get myself into a scrape, perhaps," said the knacker, who was only putting a more keen edge upon the curiosity which he had excited, for he intended to yield all the time.
"We won't say a word," observed the landlady.
"And I'll stand a quartern of blue ruin," added the landlord, "with three outs—for you, me, and the missus."
"Well—if I must, I must," said the knacker, with affected reluctance. "The fact is," he continued slowly, as if he were weighing every word he uttered, "some of the primest bits of the first-rate flesh that goes out of the knackers' yards of this wast metropolis is sent to the workuses!"
"The workhouses!" ejaculated the landlady: "oh, what a horror!"
"An abomination!" cried the landlord, filling three wine-glasses with gin.
"It is God's truth—and now that I've said it, I'll stick to it," said the knacker.
"It's a shame—a burning shame!" screamed a female voice. "My poor old mother's in the Union, after having paid rates and taxes for forty-two year; and if they make her eat horse's flesh, I'd like to know whether this country is governed by savages or not."
"And my brother's in a workus too," said a poor decrepit old man; "and he once kept his carriage and dined in company with George the Third at Guildhall, where he'd no end of turtle and venison. But, lack-a-daisy! this is a sad falling off, if he's to come down to horse-flesh in his old age."