They
entered it as men accustomed, and were greeted with smiles and
many civil words from the lady at the bar, who inquired very
cheerfully what the gentlemen would have. They soon found
themselves seated in the tap, and, though it was not entirely
unoccupied, in their accustomed places, for there seemed a
general understanding that they enjoyed a prescriptive right.
With hunches of white bread in their black hands, and grinning
with their sable countenances and ivory teeth, they really
looked like a gang of negroes at a revel.
The cups of ale circulated, the pipes were lighted, the
preliminary puffs achieved. There was at length silence, when
he who seemed their leader and who filled a sort of
president's seat, took his pipe from his mouth, and then
uttering the first complete sentence that had yet been
expressed aloud, thus delivered himself.
"The fact is we are tommied to death."
"You never spoke a truer word, Master Nixon," said one of his
companions.
"It's gospel, every word of it," said another.
"And the point is," continued Master Nixon, "what are we for
to do?"
"Ay, surely," said a collier; "that's the marrow."
"Ay, ay," agreed several; "there it is.
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