Читать книгу Mornings at Bow Street - J. Wight - Страница 13

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Two young men—the one a deputy drover, and the other an operative boot-maker—were charged by a watchman with having "bother'd him on his bate," and refused to "go along off of it when he tould 'em."

He was asked to describe the nature of the bother; and he replied, that they came rambling up to him intosticatedly, and ax'd him—"Charley, where am the waits?"[10] "I don't know," says I—"get along out of it; and don't be after axing about such nonsense," says I. "We won't," says they—"we'll wait for the waits and have a dance, for we've nothing better to do—without we go and break open a house!" says they to me. "Fait," says I, "but ye'd better be off to the beds of ye, out of the kould," says I; "and with that they got hould of me, and twirled me about and about for a bit of a waultz, as they called it. So then I twirled my rattle, and they twirled me, and more watchmen came twirling into it—that's the waltz: and we twirled and twirled, all in a bunch together, till at last we managed to twirl them into the door of the watch-house; and here they are, your honour, to answer for that same."

The defendants were asked what they had to say for themselves, and the drover undertook to be spokesman:—

"Your worships, last night I lost two fat ship (sheep), and I goz me over the water to see for 'em, and couldn't find 'em, not nowhere, your worships. 'Dang the ship,' says I, 'vauts the use of vaulking my legs off arter 'em, I'll get a drop o' summat vaum and comfortable; so I goz me into a public-house, and calls for a pint o' beer with the chill off; and the beer, and the wexing about the ship, made me desperate hungry; and so I vaulks myself to a slap-bang shop, for half-a-pound of beef; and just as I'd got it up, to pop in the first bit, a woman, vaut I nows nothin' on, comes behind me, and vips it off the fork.—'Hallo! missis,' says I, 'don't you come that 'ere agen.'"—

Here his narrative was broken off by the magistrate desiring him to come to the watchman's charge at once; and he cut short his story by showing his wrist, marked with five little wounds, all a-row; which wounds, he said, were inflicted by the teeth of the lady who wanted his beef, and that he "got vell vhopp'd into the bargain by some of her chaps." Then the loss of his sheep, the bite of the lady, and "the vhopping of the chaps," made him "desperate out of humour," and meeting with his old friend the boot-closer, they went and got tipsy together, and, in that state, they thought to have a bit of fun with the watchman; but he was "sich a sulky chap," that he shut them up for it.

The magistrate told them to pay their fees, and go home, and mix a little wisdom with their merriment in future.