This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often to resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had “come up” in her mind. How it had been brought to her she didn’t know, but it was there before her as if it had been “scored with the chalk on the chimney-board—” as Bulstrode should say, “his inside was that black as if the hairs of his head knowed the thoughts of his heart, he’d tear ’em up by the roots.”
“That’s odd,” said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and a piping voice. “Why, I read in the Trumpet that was what the Duke of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went over to the Romans.”
“Very like,” said Mrs. Dollop. “If one raskill said it, it’s more reason why another should. But hypo crite as he’s been, and holding things with that high hand, as there was no parson i’ the country good enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and Old Harry’s been too many for him.”
“Ay, ay, he’s a ’complice you can’t send out o’ the country,” said Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped among it dimly. “But by what I can make out, there’s them says Bulstrode was for running away, for fear o’ being found out, before now.”
“He’ll be drove away, whether or no,” said Mr. Dill, the barber, who had just dropped in. “I shaved Fletcher, Hawley’s clerk, this morning—he’s got a bad finger—and he says they’re all of one mind to get rid of Bulstrode. Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants him out o’ the parish. And there’s gentlemen in this town says they’d as soon dine with