Does the reader remember Diggs' tommy shop? And Master
Joseph? Well a terrible scene took place there. The Wodgate
girl, with a back like a grasshopper, of the Baptist school
religion, who had married Tummas, once a pupil of the Bishop
and still his fervent follower, although he had cut open his
pupil's head, was the daughter of a man who had worked many
years in Diggs' field, had suffered much under his intolerable
yoke, and at the present moment was deep in his awful ledger.
She had heard from her first years of the oppression of Diggs
and had impressed it on her husband, who was intolerant of any
tyranny except at Wodgate. Tummas and his wife, and a few
chosen friends, therefore went out one morning to settle the
tommy-book of her father with Mr Diggs. A whisper of their
intention had got about among those interested in the subject.
It was a fine summer morning, some three hours from noon, the
shop was shut, indeed it had not been opened since the riots,
and all the lower windows of the dwelling were closed, barred,
and bolted.
A crowd of women had collected. There was Mistress Page and
Mistress Prance, old Dame Toddles and Mrs Mullins, Liza Gray
and the comely dame who was so fond of society that she liked
even a riot.
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