"Curses on your head!" muttered Todd.
"Bless me, what a world we live in," said the beadle.
"Wretch—beast," muttered Todd; "what does he want here at this time of day?"
"Yes, to-morrow's Sunday," said the beadle, as if pursuing a train of thought that had found a home in his brain. "How the weeks do run round, to be sure, and one Sunday comes after another at such a rate, that it seems as if there was weeks and weeks and weeks of 'em, without any of the other days at all. I wish I hadn't to come here."
Todd uttered faintly some dreadful imprecations, and the beadle continued talking to himself to keep his courage up, as was evident from his nervous and fidgetty manner.
"Ah, dear, me. Conwulsions! I tried to persuade my wife to come and dust the communion table and the pulpit-cushions for to-morrow, but she politely declined; she needn't have thrown the bellows at my head though, for all that."
"Dust the pulpit-cushions!" thought Todd. "The wretch is coming up here! I shall have to cut his throat, and leave him at the bottom of the pulpit for the parson to tread upon the first thing he does to-morrow, upon coming up here to preach."
As Todd spoke, he took a clasped knife out of his pocket, and opened it with his teeth. "Oh, yes, my old friend, I shall, I see, be under the painful necessity of cutting your throat, that I shall, and I shall not hesitate about it at all."
"Yes," added the beadle, "I mean to say that to throw the bellows at the man is like adding insult to injury, for it is blowing him up in a kind of way that's anything but agreeable. Lor! how cold and rum the church does feel. Rum? why did I say rum and put myself in mind of it? Oh, don't I like it, rather! If I only now had a glass of real fine old Jamaica rum at this moment, I'd be as happy as a bishop."
"Oh, I'll rum you!" growled Todd.