to you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is
common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not
so? Will you not speak? Answer!"

"I prefer not to," he replied in a flutelike tone. It seemed to me that,
while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement
that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the
irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount
consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.

"You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
according to common usage and common sense?"

He briefly gave me to understand, that on that point my judgment was
sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.

It is not seldom the case that, when a man is browbeaten in some
unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in
his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the
other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.

"Turkey," said I, "what do you think of this? Am I not right?"

"With submission, sir," said Turkey, in his blandest tone, "I think that
you are."

"Nippers," said I, "what do _you_ think of it?"