“Dear me!” answered Prigg; “how very strange, my favourite dish—if ever Mrs. Prigg is in doubt about—”
“It be wery plain,” said Bumpkin.
“The plainer the better, my dear sir; as I always say to my servants, if you—”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Bumpkin; “I be ’ardly fit to wait on a gennleman like you. I ain’t ’ad time this morning to change my gown and tidy up myself.”
“Really, my dear madam—don’t, now; I adjure you; make no apologies—it is not the dress—or the—or the —, anything in fact, that makes us what we are;—don’t, if you please.”
And here his profound sentiments died away again and were lost to the world; and the worthy man, not long after, was discussing his favourite dish with greedy relish.
“An when’ll this ’ere thing be on, Mr. Prigg, does thee think? It be a hell of a long time.”
“Tom! Tom!” exclaimed Mrs. Bumpkin. But Mr.
Prigg was too well bred and too much occupied with his pork and greens to hear the very wayward epithet of the Farmer Bumpkin.
“Quite so,” said the lawyer; “quite so, it is so difficult to tell when a case will come on. You’re in the list to-day and gone to-morrow; a man the other day was just worried as you have been; but mark this; at the trial, Mr. Bumpkin, the jury gave that man a verdict for a thousand pounds!”