The peal of laughter had scarce died away when a couple of weavers had an exquisite idea. They hoisted themselves on one of the pieceboards and began to clack together the wooden heels of their brass-bound clogs. Across the market-place two more men began to clack. There was a general scramble for the pieceboards.
The infection caught and spread instantaneously. The tall pieceboards became an avenue of legs regularly moving—legs in casings of hide, in wrappings of straw-band, calves and tibias in stockings of grey and white and blue and brown—and an appalling racket of sound arose. In a second they had taken their time from the original clackers; the rhythmic high noise filled the market-place, rang under the Piece Hall arches, spread in a harsh, splitting cascade to the hills, affronted the sense of hearing. A man from Booth tossed up a pigeon. The derisive, puerile noise fell to a soft beat; it rose again as if a regiment of paviors had been at work; and the villainous dogs that pressed round the preposterous exciseman seemed but to await a signal from their masters. The bell in the turret of the Piece Hall struck eight; the wooden heels accompanied it; and then, as if by magic, there came a silence. Eyes still streaming with tears of enjoyment turned towards the Piece Hall steps. The big red man was descending them.
Monjoy extended his hand and snapped his fingers.
“Call those dogs off!” he ordered; and from the indescribable short mingling of noises that followed each dog seemed to sort out his own cluck or call or whistle, just as they had threaded the invisible tracks across the market-place. The great fellow stood opposite the exciseman.
“Our new Resident Supervisor?” he said courteously, his lips twitching as if he himself had to strive not to make drollery of it.
The heavy, livid lids behind the round black spectacles lifted a little, and the dwarf gave a short nasal “Hn, hn!”
“Yes, yes; I am he; hn, hn! My name is Cope—Jeremy Cope.”
This time Big Monjoy could not resist the smile. “It is a historic name in these parts,” he said.
“Yes, yes, yes.... I should say, rather, How so, Mr. ——?”
“How so? Well, if the fellows you see about you are anything at all in politics (which I doubt), they are for—you know whom: not the Elector. A gentleman of your name made himself famous some thirty years ago, and things move slowly hereabouts. But perhaps you have heard my own name from William Huggins—Arthur Monjoy.”