“Call it skin, sir, and go on.”
“Sk-skin off my face with a lin-liniment,” cried he, “and I could sc-scream out with pain whenever I speak!”
“Balm of marigolds, with the essential oil of crab-apple,” said Martha. “I made it myself.”
“I wish to Hea-Heaven you had tr-tried it, too,” whispered he.
“Brother Scroope, you are ungrateful,” said Mrs. Ricketts, with the air of a Judge, charging. “The vicissitudes of temperature, here, require the use of astringents. The excessive heat of that police-court—”
“By the way, how has that affair ended?” asked Haggerstone.
“I'll tell you,” screamed out Purvis, in a burst of eagerness. “They 've fi-fi-fiued me a hundred and f-f-fifty scadi for being w-where I never was, and fighting somebody I n-never saw.”
“You got off cheaply, sir. I 've known' a man sentenced to the galleys for less; and with a better character to boot,” muttered he to himself.
“Lord Norwood and the rest said that I was a pr-pr-principal, and he swore that he found me hiding in a cave.”
“And did he so?”