“They be allays gwine suckitt.”
“Quite so. That is precisely what the profession is always observing. No sooner do they return from one circuit than they start off on another. Are you aware, Mr. Bumpkin, that we pay a judge five thousand a-year to try a pickpocket?”
“Hem!” said Bumpkin, “I bean’t aware on it. Never used t’ have so many o’ these ’ere—what d’ye call ’ems?”
“Circuits. No—but you see, here now is an instance. There’s a prisoner away somewhere, I think down at Bodmin, hundreds of miles off, and I believe he has sent to say that they must come down and try him at once, for he can’t wait.”
“I’d mak’ un wait. Why should honest men wait for sich as he? I bin waitin’ long enough.”
“Quite so. And the consequence is that the Lord Chief Justice of England is going down to try him, a common pickpocket, I believe, and his Lordship is the very head of the Judicial Body.”
“Hem!” said Mr. Bumpkin; “then I may as well goo hoame?”
“Quite so,” answered the amiable Prigg; “in fact, better—much better.”
“An’ we shan’t come on now, sir; bean’t there no chance?”
“Not the least, my dear sir; but you see we have not been idle; we have been advancing, in fact, during the whole time that has seemed to you so long. Now, just look, my dear sir; we have fought no less than ten appeals, right up, mind you, to the Court of Appeal itself; we have fought two demurrers; we have compelled them three times to give better answers to our interrogatories, and we have had fourteen other