"If ony on ye had had any gumption," Mr Snaggs was saying fearlessly to
the parsons, "ye'd ha' gone straight to th' Chief Bailiff and ye'd
ha'--Houch!" He made the peculiar exclamatory noise roughly indicated by
the last word, and spat in disgust; and without the slightest ceremony
of adieu walked ponderously away up the slope, leaving his sentence
unfinished.
"It is remarkable how Mr Snaggs flees from before my face," said a neat,
alert, pleasant voice from behind the three parsons. "And yet save that
in my unregenerate day I once knocked him off a stool in front of his
own theayter, I never did him harm nor wished him anything but good....
Gentlemen!"
A rather small, slight man of about forty, with tiny feet and hands,
and "very quick on his pins," saluted the three parsons gravely.
"Mr Smith!" one parson stiffly inclined.
"Mr Smith!" from the second.
"Brother Smith!" from the third, who was Jock Smith's own parson, being
in charge of the Bethesda in Trafalgar Road where Jock Smith worshipped
and where he had recently begun to preach as a local preacher.
Jock Smith, herbalist, shook hands with vivacity but also with
self-consciousness.
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