“I wish you wouldn’t yowl out in that onyearthly way, sir; you’ll disturb a deliky lady I has in my charge,” expostulated mammy.
“Oh, I’ll roar you softly an’ it were a sucking dove, and bear my tortures with the patience of a slaughtered lamb,” laughed Dick, in a lachrymose manner.
“I hope it aint as bad as all that, sir. Take a sup o’ brandy out of my bottle,” said mammy, feeling about all the vacant seats with her big hands.
At this instant the coach started so suddenly with such a violent lurch, that mammy was jerked back, and precipitated upon the knees of the unlucky Dick. And in scrambling upon her feet she laid hold of his hair to help herself up by.
“Outch!” screeched the victim. “She’s finished me now. She has scalped me and broken both my legs. I know they’ll have to be amputated!”
“Very sorry, sir, I’m sure,” said mammy, as she reeled about with the swinging of the coach, and finally dropped into a vacant seat. “Very sorry, but you will keep a hitting up agin me. I hope you aint hurt much?”
“Hurt much? I tell you you have crushed both my knees to a pulp, and I know I shall have to get them taken off.”
“Very sorry, sir! but I can recommend you to a doctor as saws legs off beautiful, and likewise to a upholster who sells elegant wooden ones,” said mammy, sympathetically.
“Many thanks! But how about my head? You have pulled two great handfuls of hair out by the roots, and I know I shall have to get the rest shaved!” laughed and groaned Dick.
“Well, sir, I can direct you to a gentleman of the barbarous line of business, who will shave your head as clean as a peeled potaty, and sell you a lovely false wig.”