_Mr. Forester_: “Do you know, Dibdin, that fellow Jessop, the engineer, set on by those Gloucester fellows, wants to put thirteen or fourteen bars or weirs in the river between here and Gloucester; why, it would shut out every fish worth eating.” “What could be his object?” asked Dibdin. “Oh, he believes, like Brindley, that rivers were made to feed canals with, and his backers—the Gloucester gentlemen, and the Stafford and Worcester Canal Company—say, to make the river navigable at all seasons up to Coalbrookdale; but my belief is that it is intended to crush what bit of trade there yet remains on the river here, and to give them a monopoly in the carrying trade, for our bargemen would be taxed, whilst their carriers would be free, or nearly so.” “We beat them, though,” said Mr. Pritchard. “So we did,” added the Squire, “but we had a hard job: begad, I thought our watermen had pretty well primed me when I went up to see Pitt on the subject; but I had not been with him five minutes before I found he knew far more about the river than I did: “‘I am no orator, as Brutus is, But, as you know me all, a plain and honest man.’” _Several voices_: “Bravo, Squire.” _To Stephens_: “Will you take a flounder?—‘flat as a flounder,’ they say. I know you have a sympathy with flats, if not a liking for them.” “The Broseley colliers made a flat of him when they dragged his own pond for the fish he was so grateful for,” said Hinton. The laugh went against the parson, who somehow missed his share of a venison pasty, which was a favourite of his. He had been helped to a slice from a haunch which stood in the centre of the table, and had had a cut out of a saddle of mutton at one end, but he missed his favourite dish.