"Begging your pardon, Mr. Vickley, I only spoke anatomically. If you comes here, sir, you'll find that all the smell comes out of this here opening."
"What! An opening close to my pew! My family pew, where I every Sunday enjoy my repose—I mean my hopes of everlasting glory? Upon my life, I think it's a piece of—of d—d impudence to open the floor of the church, close to my pew. If there was to be anything of the sort done, couldn't it have been done somewhere among the free sittings, I should like to know?"
"Mr. Vickley," said Sir Richard, "pray be satisfied that I have sufficient authority for what I do here; and if I had thought it necessary to take up the flooring of your pew while you had been in it, I should have done it."
"And pray, sir," said Mr. Vickley, swelling himself out to as large a size as possible, and glancing at his watch chain, to see that all the seals hung upon the convexity of his paunch as usual—"who are you?"
"Oh, dear—oh, dear," said the beadle. "Conwulsions!—conwulsions! What a thing it is to see authorities a-going it at each other. Gentlemen—gentlemen. Conwulsions!—ain't there lots of poor people in the world? Don't you be a-going it at each other."
"I am a magistrate," said Sir Richard.
"And I am an over—seer. Ah!"
"You may be an overseer or an underseer, if you like. I am going to search the vaults of St. Dunstan's."
The churchwarden now took the overseer aside, and after a while succeeded in calming down his irascibility.
"Oh, well—well," said Mr. Vickley. "Authorities is authorities; and if so be as the horrid smell in the church can be got rid of, I'm as willing as possible. It has often prevented me sleeping—I mean listening to the sermon. Your servant, sir—I shall, of course, be very happy to assist you."