Sus. I say, Don't do it, Mattie. We'll fall out, if you do. Don't do it, Matilda—La! there's that lumping Bill again—always a comin' up the stair when you don't want him!
Enter BILL.
Mat. Well, Bill, how have you been getting on?
Bill. Pretty tollol, Mattie. But I can't go on so. (Holds out his stool.) It ain't respectable.
Mat. What ain't respectable? Everything's respectable that's honest.
Bill. Why, who ever saw a respectable shiner goin' about with a three-legged stool for a blackin' box? It ain't the thing. The rig'lars chaffs me fit to throw it at their 'eads, they does—only there's too many on 'em, an' I've got to dror it mild. A box I must have, or a feller's ockypation's gone. Look ye here! One bob, one tanner, and a joey! There! that's what comes of never condescending to an 'a'penny.
Sus. Bless us! what mighty fine words we've got a waitin' on us!
Bill. If I 'ave a weakness, Miss Susan, it's for the right word in the right place—as the coster said to the devil-dodger as blowed him up for purfane swearin'.—When a gen'leman hoffers me an 'a'penny, I axes him in the purlitest manner I can assume, to oblige me by givin' of it to the first beggar he may 'ave the good fort'n to meet. Some on 'em throws down the 'a'penny. Most on 'em makes it a penny.—But I say, Mattie, you don't want nobody arter you—do you now?
Mat. I don't know what you mean by that, Bill.
Bill. You don't want a father—do you now? Do she, Susan?