Claude.
Oh, if you’d only heard the questions they asked me! There were reporters there, so it’ll be in the papers and you can read for yourself. They made me appear a perfect brute.
Grace.
I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you fancy.
Claude.
You see, I hadn’t a chance of defending myself. I wasn’t going to make excuses to a parcel of Dissenting shopkeepers. It made me look as if I hadn’t a leg to stand on.
Grace.
After all, what can it matter what a dozen yokels think of you?
Claude.
And afterwards when I came out—they had the inquest in that big room upstairs at the Insoley Arms—there was a crowd outside, people I’d known all my life, I suppose they’d been taking the opportunity to have a good soak, and they hissed me as I passed.