into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don't
look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to
see into your backbone for nothingk.' That was what I said, and Mr.
Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe. "For by what I can
make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored
man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company--though dead he lies
in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's
them knows more than they _should_ know about how he got there."

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr.
Crabbe's apparent dimness. "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house,
and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the
country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come
near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off
Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o'
joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth--I don't want anybody to
come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's
got a service for--I don't want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking."

Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to
dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more
courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them
with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they
could be brought round again by further moisture.

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the
dyer. "It's been done many and many's the time. If there's been foul
play they might find it out."

"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically. "I know what
doctors are. They're a deal too cunning to be found out. And this
Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before the breath
was well out o' their body--it's plain enough what use he wanted to
make o' looking into respectable people's insides. He knows drugs, you
may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're
swallowed nor after. Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter,