"Not only a pleasure to me, your worships, but a very great honour to my poor house. What will your worships be pleased to eat? Butcher's meat I would have had, if only I had known of it. But one thing I can truly say, my cottage has the best of fish."
"That I can believe," said Stew; "because you sell all the worst to me. Another such a trick, Llewellyn, and I have you in the stocks."
This astonished me so much—for his fish had never died over four days—that nothing but my countenance could express my feelings.
"I crave your pardon, Justice Stew," said the tall grey gentleman with the velvet coat, as he rose in a manner that overawed me, for he stood a good foot over Anthony Stew, and a couple of inches over me; "may we not enter upon the matter which has led us to this place?"
"Certainly, Sir Philip, certainly," Stew replied, with a style which proved that Sir Philip must be of no small position; "all I meant, Sir Philip, was just to let you see the sort of fellow we have to deal with."
"My integrity is well known," I answered, turning from him to the gentleman; "not only in this parish, but for miles and miles round. It is not my habit to praise myself; and in truth I find no necessity. Even a famous newspaper, so far away as Bristol, the celebrated 'Felix Farley's Journal'——"
"Just so," said the elder gentleman; "it is that which has brought us here; although, as I fear, on a hopeless errand."
With these words he leaned away, as if he had been long accustomed to be disappointed. To me it was no small relief to find their business peaceable, and that neither a hare which had rushed at me like a lion through a gate by moonlight, nor a stupid covey of partridges (nineteen in number, which gave me no peace while excluded from my dripping-pan), nor even a pheasant cock whose crowing was of the most insulting tone,—that none of these had been complaining to the bench emboldened me, and renewed my sense of reason. But I felt that Justice Stew could not be trusted for a moment to take this point in a proper light. Therefore I kept my wits in the chains, taking soundings of them both.
"Now, Llewellyn, no nonsense, mind!" began Squire Stew, with his face like a hatchet, and scollops over his eyebrows: "what we are come for is very simple, and need not unsettle your conscience, as you have allowed it to do, I fear. Keep your aspect of innocent wonder for the next time you are brought before me. I only wish your fish were as bright and slippery as you are."
"May I humbly ask what matter it pleases your worship to be thinking of?"