"Stop, stop!" called Rankin. "Did you get this other waistcoat at the same time?"
"Yes, I did, an' a lot more besides, an' I tuk them all up and gev them to me mother just the same as I gives her all me wages and the hull of the clothes an' more besides give me fur goin' round to the Rah-seen House fur to buy the drinks—"
"That will do, that will do," interrupted Rankin. "You can go."
"Faith, I knew ye'd hev to discharge me, fur I'm as innercent as y'are yerself."
Mrs. Priest was called.
She came in with more assurance now, as she had become convinced, from seeing Hampstead in the dock and guarded by the police, that the matter in question did not refer to her consumption of coal, or her legal right to perquisites.
"Mrs. Priest, did you ever see that waistcoat before?" said Rankin.
"See it before! Didn't you take it out of me own hands not two hours ago? What are ye after, man?"
Rankin explained, that the magistrate wished to know all about it.
"Well, I'll tell his lordship the hull story: Ye see, yer 'anor, the boy gets the clothes from Mr. Geoffrey and brings them up to me last Wednesday night begone and says they was give to him, an' the next day I wus lookin' through them, and I thought I'd sell this weskit becas the patthern is a thrifle large for a child, an' I puts me 'and into these 'ere pockets on the inside an' I pulls out a paper—"