Two days afterwards Master Stephen Treen and Mr. Matthew Holman were
reported found by the police, Mr. Holman showing marked signs of a
distinct relapse from grace. My aunt had to pay for their being sent
home. The next day she received, through the post, in an unpaid
envelope, the lost excursion tickets. No comment accompanied them. Her
visiting-card was in the purse; evidently the thief, having no use for
old excursion tickets, had availed himself of it to send them back to
her. She has them to this day, and never looks at them without a qualm.
That was her first excursion; she tells me that never, under any
circumstances, will she try another.
The Irregularity of the Juryman
Chapter I
THE JURYMAN IS STARTLED
His first feeling was one of annoyance. All-round annoyance.
Comprehensive disgust. He did not want to be a juryman. He flattered
himself that he had something better to do with his time. Half-a-dozen
matters required his attention. Instead of which, here he was obtruding
himself into matters in which he did not take the faintest interest.
Actually dragged into interference with other people's most intimate
affairs. And in that stuffy court. And it had been a principle of his
life never to concern himself with what was no business of his. Talk
about the system of trial by jury being a bulwark of the Constitution!
At that moment he had no opinion of the Constitution; or its bulwarks
either.
Then there were his colleagues. He had never been associated with
eleven persons with whom he felt himself to be less in sympathy. The
fellow they had chosen to be foreman he felt convinced was a
cheesemonger. He looked it. The others looked, if anything, worse.
Not, he acknowledged, that there was anything inherently wrong in being
a cheesemonger. Still, one did not want to sit cheek by jowl with
persons of that sort for an indefinite length of time. And there were
cases--particularly in the Probate Court--which lasted days; even weeks.
If he were in for one of those! The perspiration nearly stood on his
brow at the horror of the thought.
What was the case about? What was that inarticulate person saying?
Philip Poland knew nothing about courts--and did not want to--but he
took it for granted that the gentleman in a wig and gown, with his
hands folded over his portly stomach, was counsel for one side or the
other--though he had not the slightest notion which. He had no idea how
they managed things in places of this sort. As he eyed him he felt that
he was against him anyhow. If he were paid to speak, why did not the
man speak up?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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