“You’d do very well to grin through a horse collar, you would,” remarked Jones. “Why don’t you try it? It’s a much more respectable line of business than prigging, I should say.”
Mr. Jones found his strength giving way. He did not like to leave go—nevertheless he called out for assistance.
At this particular time a grand piece was being performed by Signor Maronski and two of his pupils, and it was of so furious a character that the dulcet voice of James Jabez Jones was drowned thereby.
Nevertheless, when our hero heard the footman shout out he was perfectly furious and driven almost to desperation.
He placed both knees against the brickwork and gave his body a sudden and violent jerk. The effect was magical.
James Jabez Jones lost his equilibrium, and he and the burglar fell together in a deadly grasp.
A crash followed immediately; the glass of the greenhouse was shivered into a thousand fragments, and two men fell upon the tesselated pavement. In their passage pots and flowers were upset, and worse than all the hat worn by Lord Fitzbogleton was forced over his eyes, where it remained like an extinguisher, his lordship at the same time being knocked over by the concussion, and a scene took place which I shall find it difficult to describe.
In the first place Arabella Lovejoyce, who was under the impression that a thunderbolt had fallen, uttered a series of piercing screams. The company in the further room rose from their seats and rushed pell-mell towards the spot from whence the sounds proceeded, and in a moment the green-house and the adjoining room were filled with people with anxious and inquiring faces.
The charming Arabella fainted in the arms of Major Smithers Smythe; on the hard pavement of the conservatory lay Charles Peace, stunned and motionless, and at a short distance from him was the prostrate form of James Jabez Jones, with pieces of glass sticking in his unmentionables, and his white stockings stained with blood from the same cause.
Poor fellow, his appearance was rueful in the extreme, but he was not reduced to a comatose state, albeit he was terribly bruised, and was aching in every limb.