But Mr. Gape was apt to make long speeches, and therefore Mr. Moulder interrupted him. "You had better pay your five shillings, sir, and have no jaw about it. The man is standing idle there."
"It's not the value of the money," said Dockwrath, "but I must decline to acknowledge that I am amenable to the jurisdiction."
"There has clearly been a mistake," said Johnson from Sheffield, "and we had better settle it among us; anything is better than a row." Johnson from Sheffield was a man somewhat inclined to dispute the supremacy of Moulder from Houndsditch.
"No, Johnson," said the president. "Anything is not better than a row. A premeditated infraction of our rules is not better than a row."
"Did you say premeditated?" said Kantwise. "I think not premeditated."
"I did say premeditated, and I say it again."
"It looks uncommon like it," said Snengkeld.
"When a gentleman," said Gape, "who does not belong to a society--"
"It's no good having more talk," said Moulder, "and we'll soon bring this to an end. Mr.--; I haven't the honour of knowing the gentleman's name."
"My name is Dockwrath, and I am a solicitor."
"Oh, a solicitor; are you? and you said last night you was commercial! Will you be good enough to tell us, Mr. Solicitor--for I didn't just catch your name, except that it begins with a dock--and that's where most of your clients are to be found, I suppose--"
"Order, order, order!" said Kantwise, holding up both his hands.
"It's the chair as is speaking," said Mr. Gape, who had a true Englishman's notion that the chair itself could not be called to order.
"You shouldn't insult the gentleman because he has his own ideas," said Johnson.
"I don't want to insult no one," continued Moulder; "and those who know me best, among whom I can't as yet count Mr. Johnson, though hopes I shall some day, won't say it of me." "Hear--hear--hear!" from both Snengkeld and Gape; to which Kantwise added a little "hear--hear!" of his own, of which Mr. Moulder did not quite approve. "Mr. Snengkeld and Mr. Gape, they're my old friends, and they knows me. And they knows the way of a commercial room--which some gentlemen don't seem as though they do. I don't want to insult no one; but as chairman here at this conwivial meeting, I asks that gentleman who says he is a solicitor whether he means to pay his dinner bill according to the rules of the room, or whether he don't?"