ty tongues were speaking at
once--and those, shrill and excited ones. In vain Lionel assured them
that if one, instead of all, would tell it, he should understand it
sooner; that if their tone were subdued, instead of loud enough to be
heard yonder at the brick-fields, it might be more desirable. Excited
women, suffering under what they deem a wrong, cannot be made quiet; you
may as well try to put down a rising flood. Lionel resigned himself to
his fate, and listened; and at this stage of the affair a new feature of
it struck his eye and surprised him. Scarcely one of the women but bore
in her hand some uncooked meat. Such meat! Lionel drew himself and his
coat from too close proximity to it. It was of varied hues, and walking
away alive. Upon plates, whole or broken, upon half-saucers, upon
dust-pans, upon fire-shovels, held at the end of tongs, hooked on to a
fork, spread out in a coal-box; anyhow so as to avoid contact with
fingers, these dainty pieces were exhibited for inspection.

By what Lionel could gather, it appeared that this meat had been
purchased on Saturday night at Peckaby's shop. The women had said then,
one and all, that it was not good; and Mr. Peckaby had been regaled with
various open conjectures, more plain than polite, as to the state of the
animal from which it had been supplied. Independent of the quality of
the meat, it was none the better, even then, for having been kept. The
women scented this; but Peckaby, and Peckaby's wife, who was always in
the shop with her husband on a Saturday night, protested and vowed that
their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly
good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to
keep it so long. The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the
assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the
meat and took it home. On Sunday morning they found the meat
was--anything you may imagine. It was neither cookable nor eatable; and
their anger against Peckaby was not diminished by a certain fact which
oozed out to them; namely, that Peckaby himself did not cut _his_
Sunday's dinner off the meat in his shop, but sent to buy it of one of
the Deerham butchers. The general indignation was great; the men,
deprived of their Sunday's meat, joined in it; but nothing could be done
until Monday morning. Peckaby's shop was always hermetically sealed on a
Sunday. Mr. Verner had been stringent in allowing no Sunday traff