The good lady, after drawing off her gloves and making sundry little decorous preparations, said a short grace over her meal, during which time Tomtit seemed to be holding his sides with repressed merriment; then, gravely laying hold of the handle of the teapot she stopped short, gave an exclamation, and flirted her fingers, as she felt it almost scalding hot.
"Tomtit, I do believe you intend to burn me to death, some day!"
"Laws, missus, dat are hot? Oh, sure I was tickler to set the nose round to the fire."
"No, you didn't! You stuck the handle right into the fire as you're always doing!"
"Laws, now, wonder if I did," said Tomtit, assuming an abstracted appearance. "'Pears as if never can 'member which dem dare is nose, and which handle. Now, I's a studdin on dat dare most all de morning—was so," said he, gathering confidence, as he saw, by Nina's dancing eyes, how greatly she was amused.
"You need a sound whipping, sir—that's what you need!" said Mrs. Nesbit, kindling up in sudden wrath.
"Oh, I knows it," said Tomtit. "We's unprofitable servants, all on us. Lord's marcy that we an't 'sumed, all on us!"
Nina was so completely overcome by this novel application of the text which she had heard her aunt laboriously drumming into Tomtit, the Sabbath before, that she laughed aloud, with rather uproarious merriment.
"Oh, aunt, there's no use! He don't know anything! He's nothing but an incarnate joke, a walking hoax!"