Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/124

, and all the townsfolk, were there with their Sunday clothes on, trying to get seats in the Courthouse or gossipping outside in low whispers. The High Street was so crowded you could hardly move along it. I had never seen the quiet old town in such a state of excitement before. For Puddleby had not had such an Assizes since 1799, when Ferdinand Phipps, the Rector's oldest son, had robbed the bank.

If I hadn't had the Doctor with me I am sure I would never have been able to make my way through the mob packed around the Court-house door. But I just followed behind him, hanging on to his coattails; and at last we got safely into the jail.

"I want to see Luke," said the Doctor to a very grand person in a blue coat with brass buttons standing at the door.

"Ask at the Superintendent's office," said the man. "Third door on the left down the corridor."

"Who is that person you spoke to, Doctor?" I asked as we went along the passage.

"He is a policeman."

"And what are policemen?"

"Policemen? They are to keep people in order. They've just been invented—by Sir Robert Peel. That's why they are also called 'peelers' sometimes. It is a wonderful age we live in. They're always thinking of something new—This will be the Superintendent's office, I suppose."