“I shall endeavour to speak the truth,” said John Kenneby, solemnly.
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said Moulder.
“Yes, Moulder, that will be my endeavour; and then I may lay my hand upon my bosom and think that I have done my duty by my country.” And as Kenneby spoke he suited the action to the word.
“Quite right, John,” said Mrs. Smiley. “Them’s the sentiments of a man, and I, as a woman having a right to speak where you are concerned, quite approve of them.”
“They’ll get nothing but the truth out of John,” said Mrs. Moulder; “not if he knows it.” These last words she added, actuated by admiration of what she had heard of Mr. Chaffanbrass, and perhaps with some little doubt as to her brother’s firmness.
“That’s where it is,” said Moulder. “Lord bless you, John, they’ll turn you round their finger like a bit of red tape. Truth! Gammon! What do they care for truth?”
“But I care, Moulder,” said Kenneby. “I don’t suppose they can make me tell falsehoods if I don’t wish it.”
“Not if you’re the man I take you to be,” said Mrs. Smiley.
“Gammon!” said Moulder.
“Mr. Moulder, that’s an objectionable word,” said Mrs. Smiley. “If John Kenneby is the man I take him to be—and who’s a right to speak if I haven’t, seeing that I am going to commit myself for this world into his hands?”—and Mrs. Smiley, as she spoke, simpered, and looked down with averted head on the fullness of her Irish tabinet—“if he’s the man that I take him to be, he won’t say on this thrilling occasion no more than the truth, nor yet no less. Now that isn’t gammon—if I know what gammon is.”
It will have been already seen that the party in question were assembled at Mr. Moulder’s room in Great St. Helen’s. There had been a little supper party there to commemorate the final arrangements as to the coming marriage, and the four were now sitting round the fire with their glasses of hot toddy at their elbows. Moulder was armed with his pipe, and was enjoying himself in that manner which most delighted him. When last we saw him he had somewhat exceeded discretion in his cups, and was not comfortable. But at the present nothing ailed him. The supper had been good, the tobacco was good, and the toddy was good. Therefore when the lovely Thais sitting beside him—Thais however on this occasion having been provided not for himself but for his brother-in-law—when Thais objected to the use of his favourite word, he merely chuckled down in the bottom of his fat throat, and allowed her to finish her sentence.
Poor John Kenneby had more—much more, on his hands than this dreadful trial. Since he had declared that the Adriatic was free to wed another, he had found himself devoted and given up to Mrs. Smiley. For some days after that auspicious evening there had been considerable wrangling between Mrs. Moulder and Mrs. Smiley as to the proceeds of the brick-field; and on this question Moulder himself had taken a part. The Moulder interest had of course desired that all right of management in the brick-field should be vested in the husband, seeing that, according to the usages of this country, brick-fields and their belongings appertain rather to men than to women; but Mrs. Smiley had soon made it evident that she by no means intended to be merely a sleeping partner in the firm. At one time Kenneby had entertained a hope of escape; for neither would the Moulder interest give way, nor would the Smiley. But two hundred a year was a great stake, and at last the thing was arranged, very much in accordance with the original Smiley view. And now at this most trying period of his life, poor Kenneby had upon his mind all the cares of a lover as well as the cares of a witness.
“I shall do my best,” said John. “I shall do my best and then throw myself upon Providence.”
“And take a little drop of something comfortable in your pocket,” said his sister, “so as to sperrit you up a little when your name’s called.”
“Sperrit him up!” said Moulder; “why I suppose he’ll be standing in that box the best part of a day. I knowed a man was a witness; it was a case of horse-stealing; and the man who was the witness was the man who’d took the horse.”
“And he was witness against hisself!” said Mrs. Smiley.
“No; he’d paid for it. That is to say, either he had or he hadn’t. That was what they wanted to get out of him, and I’m blessed if he didn’t take ’em till the judge wouldn’t set there any longer. And then they hadn’t got it out of him.”
“But John Kenneby ain’t one of that sort,” said Mrs. Smiley.
“I suppose that man did not want to unbosom himself,” said Kenneby.
“Well; no. The likes of him seldom do like to unbosom themselves,” said Moulder.
“But that will be my desire. If they will only allow me to speak freely whatever I know about this matter, I will give them no trouble.”
“You mean to act honest, John,” said his sister.
“I always did, Mary Anne.”
“Well now, I’ll tell you what it is,” said Moulder. “As Mrs. Smiley don’t like it I won’t say anything more about gammon;—not just at present, that is.”
“I’ve no objection to gammon, Mr. Moulder, when
