I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was up earlier than expected, prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to keep him out of the dust-pan - an article into which his destiny always led him sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.
"And where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.
I said I had been down searching for discarded Hunt weapons for Joe. "Ah! well!" observed Mrs. Joe. "You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt of that, I thought.
We were to have a superb breakfast, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil.
I opened the door to the company at half-past ten - making believe that it was a habit of ours to open that door - and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at the church. As he passed, I pondered whether the Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the Howl Beast in the marshes, if I divulged to that establishment. The thought did not linger, being quickly interrupted by the bustle of Mr. Hubble, a retired Hunter, and Mrs. Hubble. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a leathery fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.
Last of all entered Uncle Pumblechook, a well-to-do corn-chandler in the nearest town, who drove his own chaise-cart, and who I was not allowed to call uncle, under the severest penalties. He was a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked.
Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate Howl Beast in a Spanish arena (when they still made sport of such a thing), I got so smartingly touched up by these moral spears.
