Mrs. Bunce and the gentle Julia hearing this, lifted up their eyes and hands in astonishment, and opened a fresh volley of evidence, which concluded with a declaration from Mrs. Bunce, that she never went to see her own mother that they did not lie in wait for and attack her. "Your _mother_!" said the magistrate, "why how old are _you_?" "_Me_, your worship--why I'm turned of forty." "And pray how old may your mother be?" "Why, your worship," replied Mrs. Bunce, doubtingly, "I reckon she must be _fifty_--or thereabouts!" There was a general and very ungallant burst of laughter at the broad guess; and poor Mrs. Bunce seemed a good deal confused; but at length the gentle Julia took upon her fair self to say that Mrs. Bunce's mother was _seventy-eight_, to her own certain knowledge. At last it was ordered that the young ladies, Miss Eliza Pritchard and Miss Hannah Maria Bagwell, should find bail to keep the peace towards Mrs. Margaret Bunce; and not being prepared with any, they followed the turnkey to his stronghold, weeping as they went. A SMALL TASTE OF JIMAKEY. A new-booted, yellow-vested, blue-coated, red-headed, rosy-faced, buckish young bricklayer, was brought up from the neighbourhood of Cranford-bridge, charged by one _Tom Nagle_ with having robbed him, on the King's highway, of ten shillings in money, and one bottle of "the best _Jimakey_ rum." Tom Nagle is an honest, hard-faced, sandy-whiskered Emeralder, who takes out a drop of the rum or the whiskey, now and then, into the country, to make an honest penny of that same. "It so happened that, one Tuesday night, he went into the Queen's Head, at Cranford, with a bottle of the best _Jimakey_ rum in his little basket. There was a lovely sweet fire in the chimney, and the buckish young bricklayer was there sitting before it, with a face like a full moon at the rising, and a yard-and-a-half _backey_-pipe sticking out of the middle of it. And there was the parish-clerk, and the blacksmith of Cranford, and many other jontlemen _blowing_ their _steamers_, and taking their drops mighty convanient at that same time. So Tom Nagle sat down amongst them, and _took his drops_ 'mighty convanient' too. He drained off one pot of _heavy wet_,[24] and then another, and another, and he blew a bigger cloud than any of them; and at the last, he introduced his bottle of _Jimakey_, in the hope that some of the jontlemen would _dale_ with him--but they wouldn't. They only bother'd him--bad luck to 'em, and wouldn't dale with him at all; so he put out his pipe, and departed. Then, as he was walking away from fore-anent the door of the place, the buckish young bricklayer comes out after him, and says he, 'Hallo! Tom Nagle,' says he, 'what shall I give you for the rum?'--that's the _Jimakey_ he was axing about. 'Four and sixpence,' says Tom Nagle, says he, 'and ye shall have the corck and the bottle into it,' says he.--'No,' says the bricklayer 'I sha'n't give thee