CHAP. VI. The Maid Servant takes out a warrant against Tom: He is arrested, and put into a Jail, where he is forced to pay garnish.

The maid servant being thus deprived of her wages by her rapacious mistress, and knowing that ridicule would be the best method to expose her, went to a bailiff, a relation of her own, and told him the case, adding, that she thought the nearest way to obtain an effectual remedy both for her wages and her private satisfaction, was to expose her mistress by some stroke of ridicule, which would be matter of laughter to all the neighbours, who hated her for her avarice and rapine, and that a comical revenge had struck into her head on a sudden, which she determined that very day, with his assistance to put into execution, he promised not only to give her the best assistance in his power, but also to be himself the instrument of her immediate revenge, whereupon she asked him if he would take upon him to arrest the Cat, who by eating the beef stakes, had been the occasion of her being deprived of her place, together with her wages; she owned that she had no particular pique of resentment against the Cat, who had been for many weeks a fellow sufferer with herself in the article of starving, and she protested that she would have done the same had she been a Cat, but as she was a Woman, and not used to eat raw beef, she therefore had never thought of stealing them; that it often happened, she used to steal a slice of bread and cheese for her poor old master, whom her barbarous mistress had also locked up the victuals from, and that she had run the risque to serve him, though his wife had privately marked the bread and cheese. Certainly said the bailiff, your cause is just, and you have sufficient reason to complain. There is no law why a Cat may or may not be taken for theft; horses are subject to be impounded, and so are cows, sheep and pigs liable to imprisonment for misdemeanors of this nature; therefore as no law exists why your fellow servant should not be arrested, I will take it upon my self to make out his Mittimus, and if his mistress thinks fit to remove him by habeas Corpus, she may, but it shall cost her something, besides the procuring you your wages; I don’t regard, says the girl, my wages so much as my private revenge to have her exposed to her neighbours. That, answered the bailiff, shall be done, for I will have a whole posse of constables with me, and we will beset the house, and take her favourite before the whole street. They parted, she to observe the execution of her comical revenge, and he to raise the posse.

It was about the meridian hour, when the Sun is vertical over the heads of mortals, in plain English, it was about twelve o’clock high noon, when the bailiff appeared with his frightful posse of scare-crows, and beset the shop, to the utter dismay and consternation of the inhabitants of the wardrobe in Monmouth-street. Mrs. Clotilda Skinflint, and her Cornutus, had just sat down to a pig’s foot and vinegar, (which was the portion allotted for her spouse’s dinner,) two roasted pigeons, with toast and butter, being laid before herself, with a pint of that beer commonly called porter, while a pint of Adam’s ale, was very likely thought good enough to allay the thirst of her journeyman spouse and yoke-fellow.

Tom never dreamed of any prosecution in law being carried on against him, and therefore was purring an inoffensive song, in expectation of the skeleton of the pigeons, a leg of which he was cranching with sensible delight, when he was interrupted by the entrance of one of the bailiffs, who was followed by several others, who secured the person of Tom, and another shewed the warrant, that they might not be accused of doing any thing illegal, or contrary to form, and while some of them remained to explain the nature and legality of this seizure, he who made the caption, carried him to the first prison which came in his way, and delivered him into Salva Custoda, under the name of Tom Filch, at the same time giving the goaler and the other prisoners, a facetious and short narrative of the whole affair, and the history of the parties concerned. When the prisoners discovered, that it was all a piece of waggery, they entered hastily into the joke, and hearing that Tom the prisoner was the favourite particular of a substantial house-keeper, who would in all probability release him by paying his fees; they boldly and with one voice demanded garnish of Tom, who not being used to such questions from strangers, did not think proper to answer them. Now, if they had according to the custom of garnish, threatened to strip him, What could they have of a Cat but his Skin? But as he made no answer to their previous question, they thought it more adviseable to lock him in a dark cell, and called for ale, which for the joke’s sake, was not denied them in so unprecedented a garnish, and they sat down to regale themselves, where we shall leave them in order to finish this chapter and begin another.