―Who tried the case? says Joe.
―Recorder, says Ned.
―Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.
―Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve in tears on the bench.
―Ay, says Alf. Reuben J. was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones for the corporation there near Butt bridge.
And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:
―A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say?
―Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid!
―And a wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.
And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave