"Oh, bless you, no," said Ben, "that's amongst your little mistakes, ma'am, I can assure you. By the bye, what a blessed long time that fellow is coming with the rest of the beer and the other sausages—why, what's the matter with you, cousin Oakley—eh, old chap, you look out of sorts?"
"I don't feel just the thing, do you know, Ben."
"Not—the thing—why—why, now you come to mention it, I somehow feel as if all my blessed inside was on a turn and a twist. The devil—I—don't feel comfortable at all I don't."
"And I'm getting very ill," gasped Mr. Oakley.
"And I'm getting iller," said the beef-eater, manufacturing a word for the occasion. "Bless my soul! there's something gone wrong in my inside. I know there's murder—there's a go—oh, Lord! it's a doubling me up, it is."
"I feel as if my last hour had come," said Mr. Oakley—"I'm a—a—dying man—I am—oh, good gracious! there was a twinge!"
Mrs. Oakley, with all the coolness in the world, took down her bonnet from behind the parlour-door where it hung, and, as she put it on said,—
"I told you both that some judgment would come over you, and now you see it has. How do you like it? Providence is good, of course, to its own, and I have—"
"What—what—?"
"Pisoned the half-and-half."