“Didn’t let him get tight, you was a-goin’ to say, Tommy,” howled three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like crackers.
“Dicky ‘ad been ‘avin’ bad times for long,” the first speaker went on. “I guess he ‘ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful forever about here.”
“Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or else he was clean sold out, and hadn’t no capital to renew his stock of hairy cats and young parrots.”
“The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky’s shop, had got to look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that ‘ere shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t’other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o’ a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the conversation, “why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used to do him a turn of his trade—tattooing him, like. ‘I’m doing him to pattern, mum,’ Dicky sez, sez he: ‘a facsimile o’ myself, mum.’ It wasn’t much they drank neither—just a couple of pints; for sez the sailor gentleman, he sez, ‘I’m afeared, mum, our friend here can’t carry much even of your capital stuff. We must excuse’ sez he, ‘the failings of an artis’; but I doesn’t want his hand to shake or slip when he’s a doin’ me,’ sez he. ‘Might > spile the pattern,’ he sez, ‘also hurt’ And I wouldn’t have served old Dicky with more than was good for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn’t I promised that poor daughter of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school—years ago now—I promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of—A hangel, if here isn’t Mr. Maitland his very self!”
And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one—some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness—they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland’s appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.
“Well, Mrs. Gullick,” said poor Maitland, ruefully, “I came here for a chat with our friends—a little social relaxation—on economic questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.”
“Oh, sir, they’re a rough lot, and don’t think themselves company for the likes of you. But,” said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly—with the delight of the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale—“you ‘ve heard this hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood—”
What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland, growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her: