"Gentlemen, this is begging the question," said Fullerton, with plump dignity, and he settled his neck in his white cravat. "What I say is, that I have no enmity against the parson, nayther have you." "Nay, nay," said Warton, the saddler, who had the rectory pair horse harness on his mind, the new double set, that he saw, by the name on the packing-case, came from Peak's; "we only pity him. He has plenty of trouble wi' those two boys of his. I hear the Bad Shilling's come back now." "Ay, he's back," said Smithson. "I've got a pair of his trousers to mend. One never gets anything to make. Up at thy place last night, wasn't he, Master Portlock?" The Churchwarden nodded. "Nice boys!" said Smithson. "Dessay the father was like 'em, for the girls really are nice, like their mother." "Then he was twice as hard as he need be on Jock Morrison," continued Fullerton, who would finish. "Fancy sending a man to gaol for three months just when his brother's got a death in the house." "Fair play," cried Portlock. "The bairn died afterwards." "Well, maybe it did," said Fullerton, "but he needn't have been so hard on the poor bairn's uncle. Why not give him another chance? He's no worse in his way than the parson's boys are in theirs." "Boys will be boys," said Smithson, who wondered whether that pair of trousers to mend might result in an order for a suit. Fullerton was impatient, and cut in almost before the tailor had finished. "Clergymen's all very well in their way, gentlemen, but the dismissing of old schoolmasters and appointing of new ones don't seem to me to be in their way, especially where there's governors to a school." "Parson's a governor too," said Warton, the saddler. "_Ex officio_?" said Tomlinson, the ironmonger, who kept the bank. "Of course, of course," acquiesced Fullerton, who had not the least idea of what _ex officio_ meant; "but I said it before, and I said it to parson's own face, just the same as I'm saying it here behind his back, and any man who likes can tell him what I said," and he looked round defiantly as he spoke; "what I say is, that, whatever Humphrey Bone's faults may be, he's as good a land measurer as ever stepped." "Yes, he _is_ that," said a broad farmer-looking man. "Joseph Portlock, you said the very same thing to me yesternight." "He's a first-class penman." "Capital," said Tomlinson. "And if you know a man with a clearer head for figures," continued Fullerton, "I should be glad to see him." "Capital man at ciphering," said Smithson, the tailor, whose yearly accounts Humphrey Bone always made up. "Then, what do you want?" said Fullerton, angrily. "We've all got our faults, and if Humphrey Bone does take a little too much sometimes, hasn't he been master of Lawford school these thirty years?"