“Yes, sir. Joe were there, and t’ best o’ my belief, Mrs. Bumpkin.”
“Never mind Mrs. Bumpkin. I don’t suppose she was there, if you come to recollect; it’s quite enough if Joe was present and could hear what was said. I suppose he could hear it?”
“Stood cloase by.”
“Very well—that is slander—and slander of a very gross kind. We’ve got him.”
“Be it?” said Snooks.
“I’ll show you,” said Locust; “in law a man slanders you if he insinuates that you are dishonest; now what
does this Bumpkin do? he says ‘you don’t have me,’ meaning thereby that you don’t trick him out of his pig; and, ‘you are not selling coals,’ meaning that when you do sell coals you do trick people. Do you see?—that you cheat them, in fact rob them.”
Snooks thought Mr. Locust the most wonderful man he had ever come across. This was quite a new way of putting it.
“But ur didn’t say as much,” he said, wondering whether that made any difference.
“Perfectly immaterial in law,” said Mr. Locust: “it isn’t what a man says, it’s what he means: you put that in by an innuendo—”