“Chicken,” said Mr Toots, “you disgust me.”
“Master,” returned the Chicken, putting on his hat, “there’s a pair on us, then. Come! Here’s a offer! You’ve spoke to me more than once”t or twice’t about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi’typunnote to-morrow, and let me go.”
“Chicken,” returned Mr Toots, “after the odious sentiments you have expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.”
“Done then,” said the Chicken. “It’s a bargain. This here conduct of yourn won’t suit my book, Master. Wy, it’s mean,” said the Chicken; who seemed equally unable to get beyond that point, and to stop short of it. “That’s where it is; it’s mean!”
So Mr Toots and the Chicken agreed to part on this incompatibility of moral perception; and Mr Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily of Florence, who had thought of him as her friend upon the last night of her maiden life, and who had sent him her dear love.
CHAPTER LVII.
Another Wedding
Mr Sownds the beadle, and Mrs Miff the pew-opener, are early at their posts in the fine church where Mr Dombey was married. A yellow-faced old gentleman from India, is going to take unto himself a young wife this morning, and six carriages full of company are expected, and Mrs Miff has been informed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pave the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them.
The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.
Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she generally is; and she has always strong opinions on that subject, for it is associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of political economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; “Baptists or Wesleyans, or some o’ them,” she says), but she can never understand what business your common folks have to be married. “Drat ’em,” says Mrs Miff “you read the same things over ’em and instead of sovereigns get sixpences!”
Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff—but then he is not a pew-opener. “It must be done, Ma’am,” he says. “We must marry ’em. We must have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must have our standing armies. We must marry ’em, Ma’am,” says Mr Sownds, “and keep the country going.”