‘Look for yourself. And why is there no rogue’s yarn in it, Mr Ricketts? Because it never come off of the King’s yard, that’s why: Mr Screw-penny Bleeding Commissioner Brown never set eyes on it. Which Goldilocks bought it out of his own pocket, as likewise the paint you’re a-sitting on. So there, you mean-souled dough-faced son of a cow-poxed bitch,’ he would have added, if he had not been a peaceable, quiet sort of a man, and if the drum had not begun to beat to quarters.

