'
'Are there many of them?' inquired Mr. Pickwick dubiously.
'Three,' replied Mr. Roker.
Mr. Pickwick coughed.
'One of 'em's a parson,' said Mr. Roker, filling up a little piece
of paper as he spoke; 'another's a butcher.'
'Eh?' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
'A butcher,' repeated Mr. Roker, giving the nib of his pen a
tap on the desk to cure it of a disinclination to mark. 'What a
thorough-paced goer he used to be sure-ly! You remember Tom
Martin, Neddy?' said Roker, appealing to another man in the
lodge, who was paring the mud off his shoes with a five-and-
twenty-bladed pocket-knife.
'I should think so,' replied the party addressed, with a strong
emphasis on the personal pronoun.
'Bless my dear eyes!' said Mr. Roker, shaking his head slowly
from side to side, and gazing abstractedly out of the grated
windows before him, as if he were fondly recalling some peaceful
scene of his early youth; 'it seems but yesterday that he whopped
the coal-heaver down Fox-under-the-Hill by the wharf there.
I think I can see him now, a-coming up the Strand between
the two street-keepers, a little sobered by the bruising, with
a patch o' winegar and brown paper over his right eyelid, and
that 'ere lovely bulldog, as pinned the little boy arterwards,
a-following at his heels.
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