"Go along—go along—Eugh!—eugh! Oh, dear, how bad my cough is. I dreamt that no end of people were talking and talking away in the next room; but that can't be, as I have paid for it. Oh, dear!—oh!"
Mrs. Hardman took her cue from this; and she was at once resolved to pass off the disturbance in the next room as merely a dream of her new lodger.
"Dear me, sir," she said in the blandest possible accents; "have you indeed had a dream? What a singular thing!"
"Eugh! Is it? I don't think so."
"Well, sir, when I say singular, of course I mean that it's very natural. I always dream when I sleep in a strange bed, do you know, sir, and sometimes the most horrid dreams."
"Oh, go along."
"Yes, sir, directly. Would you like anything got for you, sir? A nice mutton chop for instance, or—or—"
"No—no! Good God, why don't you go?"
"I am going, sir. Thank you. There will be a very quiet house here, I assure you, sir."
With these words, Mrs. Hardman was about to leave the room, flattering herself that it was all passing off quite comfortably as a mere dream, when Ben, thinking it incumbent upon him to do something civil, suddenly popped his head into the room, and in a voice that sounded like the growl of some bear for his food, he said—