“There, there, there! Perhaps I was foolish to notice it; let it pass, Mr. Monjoy——”
And, as the dwarf became conciliatory again, and seemed to dread nothing so much as that the other should renew his apologies, it was odd that what in another man might have been dignity seemed, somehow, something less in him.
At the supper, to which John Emmason, as a magistrate, had been in courtesy bound to invite the new supervisor, there were present, besides three of the Executive (Raikes being left out), John Leedes (a fellow magistrate), and Hemstead, the solicitor. This Emmason was a long-nosed, horse-faced, pompous spoken man, who delivered his opinions with his eyes all but closed, and, when interrupted, waited and resumed again at his own last word. The supper was remarkable on the official, rather than on the social side, and after supper the conversation turned to the subject of certain transferences recently made from the Customs to the Excise. In this connection it would have been neither feasible nor advisable to avoid mention of the proclamation on the pillar of the Piece Hall; and on this Emmason delivered himself sententiously.
“For the two foolish fellows now in York,” he pronounced, “although the warrant for their arrest was not of my making out——”
“Parker, of Ford, made it,” Hemstead interrupted; “they were seized at the ‘Sun Inn’——”
“—of my making out, yet I doubt if a conviction will be obtained. Misguided fellows!—Taken in most compromising circumstances, Mr. Cope. But the solicitor to His Majesty’s Mint informs me ... hum! hum!... I can acquaint you with all you may desire to know of that case, Mr. Cope.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you—silly, silly fellows!” Cope murmured.
“Most nefarious!” Emmason assented. “I desire that you will not hesitate to come to me in your need. In regard, now, to any possible line of action you might elect to pursue....”
But he could get nothing from the blinking image in the black spectacles. He failed, also, in his hospitable intention of making his guest drunk, and if anybody made a profit out of the occasion, it was not the magistrate.
Before long the company at the “Cross Pipes” had nicknamed the supervisor “Johnny Cope.” The name had its rise in certain idle, daffing discussions which the big seal-engraver started, and in which Cope began to bear a share. These topics are of no present moment, save that they were directed humorously at the exciseman, and included the events of thirty years before (in which many had taken part, and all were familiar with). Monjoy usually took the whimsical side in such debates as whether laws were anything more than customs sanctioned; whether a guinea would be of much use to you in a desert; whether it would not be a thing patriotic, rather than otherwise, to counterfeit the image of a foreign king (this referred to the twenty-seven and thirty-six shilling Portugals, current in this country by consent, but not by proclamation), and a deal of similar stuff. These idle pastimes were the means of discovering a new quirk of humour in the puny exciseman. This was to close his eyes, wag his heavy head, pat the air gently away from him with his hand, and say, “La, Mr. Monjoy!”