“Hum!” grunted Squills, starting up and seizing my father’s pulse; “ninety-six,—ninety-six if a beat! And the tongue, sir!”
“Pshaw!” quoth my father; “you have not even seen my tongue!”
“No need of that; I know what it is by the state of the eyelids,—tip scarlet, sides rough as a nutmeg-grater!”
“Pshaw!” again said my father, this time impatiently.
“Well,” said Squills, solemnly, “it is my duty to say,” (here my mother entered, to tell me that supper was ready), “and I say it to you, Mrs. Caxton, and to you, Mr. Pisistratus Caxton, as the parties most nearly interested, that if you, sir, go to London upon this matter, I’ll not answer for the consequences.”
“Oh! Austin, Austin,” cried my mother, running up and throwing her arms round my father’s neck; while I, little less alarmed by Squills’s serious tone and aspect, represented strongly the inutility of Mr. Caxton’s personal interference at the present moment. All he could do on arriving in town would be to put the matter into the hands of a good lawyer, and that we could do for him; it would be time enough to send for him when the extent of the mischief done was more clearly ascertained. Meanwhile Squills griped my father’s pulse, and my mother hung on his neck.
“Ninety-six—ninety-seven!” groaned Squills in a hollow voice.
“I don’t believe it!” cried my father, almost in a passion,—“never better nor cooler in my life.”
“And the tongue—Look at his tongue, Mrs. Caxton,—a tongue, ma’am, so bright that you could see to read by it!”
“Oh! Austin, Austin!”