Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.
“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”
“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you have a rasher?”
“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste, Julia, to quit this abode of—of—this abode of—this maison du diable, there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal Guffin.
“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”
“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up la chapeau de mon pere.”
“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat. And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam. You’ve upset me so much with your d——d rubbishy parley-vooing and moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front door-step all day. D——n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every house for two miles around.”
There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for a shutter.
CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]
A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.
OH! England’s the gem of the waters,
The pride of the foam-crested sea!
And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters
Are always contented and free!
Unknown are all want and starvation;
Her subjects are strangers to vice;
And the bulwarks of this model nation
Are Calcraft and Governor Price!