“Yes, lately; but I referred to the time when one Poll Bacon of Wapping took my hand for better or for worse.”
“Really, Mr T, you quite shock me. My name was Mary, and the Bacons are a good old Hinglish name. You ’ave their harms quartered on the carriage in right o’ me. That’s something, I can tell you.”
“Something I had to pay for pretty smartly, at all events.”
“The payment, Mr T, was on account of granting harms to you, who never ’ad any.”
“And never wished for them. What do I care for such stuff?”
“And when you did choose, Mr Turnbull, you might have consulted me, instead of making yourself the laughing-stock of Sir George Naylor and all the ’eralds. Who but a madman would have chosen three harpoons saluims, and three barrels couchants, with a spouting whale for a crest? Just to point out to everybody what should hever be buried in hoblivion; and then your beastly motto—which I would have changed—‘Blubber for ever!’ Blubber indeed! henough to make hany one blubber for ever.”
“Well, the heralds told me they were just what I ought to have chosen, and very apposite, as they termed it.”
“They took your money and laughed at you. Two pair of griffins, a lion, half-a-dozen leopards, and a hand with a dagger, wouldn’t ’ave cost a farthing more. But what can you hexpect from an ’og?”
“But if I was cured, I should be what you were—Bacon.”
“I won’t demean myself, Mr Turnbull.”