it isn't much of a walk
to Kench's; and then, if it's me as is deppity, I'll go back with you,
Master Marner, and examine your primises; and if anybody's got any
fault to find with that, I'll thank him to stand up and say it out
like a man.'
By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his
self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named
as one of the superlatively sensible men.
'Let us see how the night is, though,' said the landlord, who
also considered himself personally concerned in this proposition.
'Why, it rains heavy still,' he said, returning from the door.
'Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain,' said the farrier.
'For it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like
us had a information laid before 'em and took no steps.'
The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of
the company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high
ecclesiastical life as the nolo episcopari, he consented to take on
himself the chill dignity of going to Kench's. But to the farrier's
strong disgust, Mr Macey now started an objection to his proposing
himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman,
claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his
father, that no doctor could be a constable.
'And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cow-doctor-
for a fly's a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly,' concluded Mr Macey,
wondering a little at his own ''cuteness'.
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