Punch. Poor fellow! then he won’t catch cold with the wet. Let’s put him in this snuff-box. [Pointing to coffin.
[Joey takes the figure down and gives it to Punch to hold, so as the body do not run away, and then proceeds to remove the gallows. In doing so he by accident hits Punch on the nose.
Punch. Mind what you are about! (for Punch is game, yer know, right through to the back-bone.)
Clown. Make haste, Punch, here’s somebody a-coming! (They hustle his legs and feet in; but they can’t get his head in, the undertaker not having made the coffin large enough.)
Punch. We’d better double him up, place the pall on, and take the man to the brave,—not the grave, but the brave: cos he’s been a brave man in his time may be.—Sings the song of ‘Bobbing around,’ while with the coffin he bobs Joey on the head, and exaunt.
Re-enter Punch.
Punch. That was a jolly lark, wasn’t it? Sings,—
“I’d be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Making apple-dumplings without any flour.”
All this wit must have been born in me, or nearly so; but I got a good lot of it from Porsini and Pike—and gleanings, you know. [Punch disappears and re-enters with bell.