b, all would have been well, and
I think the country would have been preserved.' The old lady with the
high nose assented; but added that if Augustus Stiltstalking had in a
general way ordered the cavalry out with instructions to charge, she
thought the country would have been preserved.

The noble Refrigerator assented; but added that if William Barnacle and
Tudor Stiltstalking, when they came over to one another and formed
their ever-memorable coalition, had boldly muzzled the newspapers,
and rendered it penal for any Editor-person to presume to discuss the
conduct of any appointed authority abroad or at home, he thought the
country would have been preserved.

It was agreed that the country (another word for the Barnacles and
Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving, but how it came to want preserving
was not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about
John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor
Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, because
there was nobody else but mob. And this was the feature of the
conversation which impressed Clennam, as a man not used to it, very
disagreeably: making him doubt if it were quite right to sit there,
silently hearing a great nation narrowed to such little bounds.
Remembering, however, that in the Parliamentary debates, whether on the
life of that nation's body or the life of its soul, the question was
usually all about and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking,
William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle
or Stiltstalking, and nobody else; he said nothing on the part of mob,
bethinking himself that mob was used to it.

Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the
three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what
they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown
him off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal
disquiet in anything that passed. His healthy state of mind appeared
even to derive a gratification from Clennam's position of embarrassment
and isolation among the good company; and if Clennam had been in that
condition with which Nobody was incessantly contending, he would have
suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a meanness,
even while he sat at the table.

In the course of a couple of hours the noble Refrigerator, at no time
less than a hundred years behind the period, g