The ground they adorn'd ever hallow'd shall be.”
CHAPTER VII.
Methinks, Benjamin,” said Uncle Timothy to the lauréat of Little Britain, as they sat tête-à-tête at breakfast on the morning after the adventure of the old harper,—“methinks I have conceded quite enough by consenting to play Esquire Bedel to the Fubsys, Muffs, and Flumgartens. A couple of lean barn-door fowls and a loin—or, as Mrs. Flumgarten classically spells it, a lion of fat country pork at Christmas, even were I a more farinaceous feeder than I am, are hardly equivalent to my approaching purgatory. You bargained, among other sights, for Westminster Abbey. Now what possible charm can the Poet's Corner have for the Fubsy family, who detest poets and poetry quite as much as ever did the second George 'boedry and bainding!' Then came the British Museum. I will now take leave to have my own way. Your eloquence, persuasive though it be, shall never talk me into a new blue coat and brass buttons.”
“Depend upon it, Uncle Timothy, Mrs Flurngarten will—”
“I know it, Benjamin. That full-blown hollyhock of the aristocracy of Mammon, who has a happy knack of picking a hole in everybody's coat, will not spare mine. Let her then, for economy's sake, pick a hole in an old coat rather than a new one.”
“The honour of our family is at stake,” urged the lauréat. “Respect, too, for Mrs. Flumgar-ten.”
Uncle Timothy whistled