The big room was, as it were,
cut up into small rooms, with walls only waist high--the sort
of separation that children make when they are playing at shops.
This had been done by Moses Gould and Michael Moon
(the two most active members of this remarkable inquiry)
with the ordinary furniture of the place. At one end of the long
mahogany table was set the one enormous garden chair, which was
surmounted by the old torn tent or umbrella which Smith himself
had suggested as a coronation canopy. Inside this erection
could be perceived the dumpy form of Mrs. Duke, with cushions
and a form of countenance that already threatened slumber.
At the other end sat the accused Smith, in a kind of dock;
for he was carefully fenced in with a quadrilateral of light
bedroom chairs, any of which he could have tossed out the window
with his big toe. He had been provided with pens and paper,
out of the latter of which he made paper boats, paper darts,
and paper dolls contentedly throughout the whole proceedings.
He never spoke or even looked up, but seemed as unconscious
as a child on the floor of an empty nursery.
On a row of chairs raised high on the top of a long settee sat
the three young ladies with their backs up against the window,
and Mary Gray in the middle; it was something between a jury
box and the stall of the Queen of Beauty at a tournament.
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