(“They’ve got the round square at work,” muttered a voice in the gallery.)
Mr. Nimble: “Now just attend; have you ever gone so far as to say that this case did not refer to you because your name was not Bumpkin?”
The witness hesitates, then says “he b’leeves not.”
“Let those two gentlemen, Mr. Crackcrib and Mr. Centrebit, step forward.”
There was a bustle in Court, and then, with grinning faces, up stepped the two men who had visited Mr. Bumpkin at the “Goose” some days before.
“Have you ever seen these gentlemen before?” asks the learned counsel.
The gentlemen alluded to looked up as if they had
practised it together, and both grinned. How can Mr. Bumpkin’s confusion be described? His under jaw fell, and his head drooped; he was like one caught in a net looking at the fowler.
The question was repeated, and Mr. Bumpkin wiped his face and returned his handkerchief into the depths of his hat, into which he would have liked to plunge also.
Question repeated in a tone that conveyed the impression that witness was one of the biggest scoundrels in the Heart of Civilization.