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Updated: June 4, 2025
'Take you all notice: that whereas some evil-disposed boys did last night break into the premises of Samuel Pinsent, Worshipful Mayor of this Borough, and did rob His Worship of several valuable pigeons; His Worship hereby offers a reward of Five Shillings to the parent or parents of any such boy as will hand him over, that the Mayor may have ten minutes with him in private. Amen.
It came through the open window from the garden, and almost as he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes it warned him that something serious was amiss with his dovecote. He flung off the bed-clothes and made a leap for the window. The night was warm and windless, with a waning moon in the east, and as yet no tremble of the dawn below it. 'You infernal young thief! shouted Mr Pinsent.
It collected no crowd, but it drew many faces to the windows and doorways, and Mr Pinsent observed that one and all broke into grins as they took the humour of his offer. He rubbed his hands together. He had been angry to begin with; yes he would confess it very angry. But he had overcome it and risen to his reputation. The town had been mistaken in thinking it could put fun on him.
They do not understand it, and Mr Pinsent understood nothing else. Could he have been told that for close upon twenty years he had been afflicting his neighbours with the pleasantries he found so enjoyable, his answer had undoubtedly been 'The bigger numskulls they! But now his doom was upon him. He ate his breakfast that morning in silence.
'Are you telling me, Mrs Halloran, that this boy of yours is the thief who stole my pigeons? Mr Pinsent, looking at the boy with a magisterial frown, began to wish he had not been quite so hasty in sending round the town sergeant. 'You did, didn't you, Mike? appealed Mrs Halloran. And Mike, looking straight before him, grunted something which might pass for an admission.
He came originally from somewhere in the South Hams, but this tells us nothing, for the folk of the South Hams are a decent, quiet lot, and you might travel the district to-day from end to end without coming across the like of Mr Pinsent. He was, in fact, an original. He could do nothing like an ordinary man, and he did everything jocosely, with a wink and a chuckle.
Still, if you would prefer ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do, he felt in his breeches pocket 'here are the five sovereigns, and once more go in peace. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century there lived at Dolphin House, Troy, a Mr Samuel Pinsent, ship-chandler, who by general consent was the funniest fellow that ever took up his abode in the town.
Possibly the boys guessed this. At any rate, they made no answer. Mr Pinsent paused only to insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its hook. Yet by the time he ran out upon the garden the depredators had made good their escape.
Mr Pinsent did not profess himself a fancier. His columbarium a mixed collection of fantails and rocketers had come to him by a side-wind of business, as offset against a bad debt; but it pleased him to sit on his terrace and watch the pretty creatures as they wheeled in flight over the harbour and among the masts of the shipping.
She was a Menhennick, tho', from t'other side o' the Duchy a very proud family and didn't mean to dip the knee to nobody, and all the less because she'd demeaned hersel', to start with, by wedding a tailor. But Key Pinsent by all allowance was handsome as blazes, and well-informed up to a point that he read Shakespeare for the mere pleasure o't.
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