“So I was, but Mr. Ruggles spoke those bad words so loud he woked me.”
“You mustn’t get up again, will you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“I have just told you I don’t wish you to.”
“Then I wont get up.”
The father lingered in the room, until he mastered his disposition to laugh, and then, when he walked out among his friends no countenance was graver than his.
“I say, Dawson,” said Ruggles, swallowing a lump in his throat, “will you oblige me by acting as chairman?––I don’t feel––very––well.”
The gentleman walked forward to where Ruggles had been standing with his back against the bar, looking down in the faces of his friends. The poor fellow seemed to have aged ten years, as he slouched off to an upturned box near the door, where he dejectedly seated himself.
“What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” asked Dawson, as if presiding over the deliberations of one of the most august assemblages in the land; “I am ready to hear any suggestion or motion.”