Page:Passions 2.pdf/103

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A COMEDY.
91


SCENE III. An open scattered street in a small country town. Enter Jenkison and Servet by opposite sides; and are going to pass without observing one another.

Serv. (calling to Jenk.) Not so fast, Mr. Jenkison, I was just going to your house.

Jenk. And 1 was just going to do myself the pleasure to call at your's.

Serv. And you was glad to go quickly along, I believe. It would neither be pleasant nor safe for you, perhaps, to meet the new member in his chair, with all his friends round him. "Baltimore for ever!" would not sound very pleasantly in your ears. Ay, Mr. Jenkison! You have made a fine hand of this business for a man of your pretensions in the profession.

Jenk. I believe, Mr. Servet, I may be permitted to assume to myself, without the imputation of vanity, as much professional dexterity in this affair as the most able of my contemporaries could have brought into the service. Every thing has been done that the very nicest manoeuvres of the law would admit of. Who could have thought of a rich friend, from nobody knows where, paying Baltimore's debts for him? Who could have thought of those fools taking him up so warmly upon his imprisonment, in manifest contradiction to the old proverb, that "rats and vermin leave a falling house?" Who could have thought so many of Mr.