“Lawk, Madam, ’twere better, were’t not, I bundle all Your Ladyship’s duds and mine up yonder against His Lordship’s comin’?”
“Right, Chock! up with ’em, and I’ll steady the road while you climb!” Suiting action to word, as Chockey, bearing the calf-skin box, cautiously mounts the rickety ladder.
“What’s it like, Chock?”
“Nothin’ I ever seed afore, My Lady; dark, stuffy; a mattress a-sprawlin’ on the bare boards, and a pair of torn quilts, and a piller no bigger’n my fist, that’s all!”
“Enough, Chock; you and I can sleep our one night in London there as soundly,” Lady Peggy’s proud lip quivers, “as I could on down or ’twixt my mother’s best lamb’s wool! Come down, Chock, by the fire; and list, to-morrow, at first crow, we’ll back to Kennaston. We’ll ’a’ been up to town, Chock! and, savin’ my twin, never will Lady Peggy look again on face of any man who now treads London street. I swear!”
“Hark, Madam!”
Chockey jumps from the ladder, eyes a-popping, while the hubbub in the street below cuts short her mistress’s valiant speech. Such a hullaballoo; such a shouting, echoing from one end of the precinct to t’other, as speeds mistress and maid both to the window, a-craning their necks far out; as sends the charwoman from her ingle-nook under ground, a-hobbling up the steep four flights.
