"That was all part of the game, Mo. Don't you see the game? It was
putting reliance on the irons led to this here warder making so free.
You go to the Zoarlogical Gardens in the Regency Park, and see if the
keeper likes walking into the den when the Bengal tiger's loose in it.
These chaps get like that, and they have to get the clinkers on 'em."
"Don't quite take your idear, Jerry. Wrap it up new."
"Don't you _see_, old Mo? He shammed savage to get the irons on his
legs, knowing how he might come by a file--which I don't, and it hasn't
come out, that I see. Then he spends the inside o' the night getting
through 'em, and rigs himself up like a picter, just so as if they was
on. So the officer was took in, with him going on like a lamb. Then up
he jumps and smashes his man's skull--makes no compliments about it, you
see. Then he closes to the door and locks it to enjoy a little leisure.
And then he changes their sootes of cloze across, and out he walks for
change of air. And he's got it!"
Uncle Mo reflected and said:--"P'r'aps!" Then Aunt M'riar, who had
hunted up the glasses without waking the children, reappeared, bringing
them; and Uncle Mo found they wouldn't do, and only prevented his seeing
anything at all. So he was bound to have a new pair and pay by the week.
A cheap pair, that would see him out, come to threepence a week for
three months.
The discovery of this painful fact threw the escaped prisoner into the
shade, and the _Morning Star_ would have been lost sight of--because it
was only Monday's paper, after all!--unless Aunt M'riar she'd put it by
for upstairs to have their turn of it, and Mrs. Burr could always read
some aloud to Mrs. Prichard, failing studious energy on the part of the
old lady. She reproduced it in compliance with the current of events.
For Uncle Moses, settling down to a fresh pipe after supper, said to his
friend, similarly occupied:--"What, now, was the name of that
charackter--him as got out at the Jug?"
"Something like Mackerel," said Mr. Alibone.
"Wrong you are, for once, Jerry! 'Twarn't no more Mackerel than it was
Camberwell."
Said Mr. Jerry:--"Take an even tizzy on it, Mo?" He twisted the paper
about to recover the paragraph, and found it. "Here we are! 'Ralph
Daverill, _alias_ Thornton, _alias_ Wix, _alias_!' ..."
"Never mind his ale-houses, Jerry. That's the name I'm consarned
with--Daverill.... What's the matter with M'riar?"
Uncle Mo had not finished his sentence owing to an interruption. For
Aunt M'riar, replacing some table-gear she was shifting, had sat down
suddenly on the nearest chair.
"Never you mind me, you two. Just you go on talking." So said Aunt
M'riar. Only she looked that scared it might have been a ghost. So Mrs.
Burr said after, who came in that very minute from a prolonged trying
on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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