"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
"Second Kings," whispered the poor necromancer, in eager fellowship, and displaying a knowledge of the Bible rare amongst his sect. "God bless you, Collins! may we meet in a better world!"
"It won't be difficult to do that," I replied dejectedly, as I withdrew to enjoy my unearned slumber.
Now the night, replete with such sphere-music, was past, and the cares that infest the day had returned to everyone on the station, except myself and two or three equally clean, useless, and aristocratic loafers in the boss's house. Toby, the half-caste, was cantering away toward Clarke's, for the weekly mail. Priestley, at his wagon, was bullocking even more desperately than usual, with a view to getting out of sight of the station as soon as possible. Pawsome, repairing a side-saddle, on his extemporised bench, was softly crooning a familiar hymn, the sentiment of which seemed appropriate to himself, whilst the language breathed the very aroma of his social atmosphere:—
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to gain the prize,
And sail'd through (adj.) seas?
In the veranda of the house, Mr. Folkestone, a young English gentleman of not less than two hundred-weight, lolled on a hammock, smoking a chibouque, and reading a magazine; while straight between us two aristocratic loafers, Vandemonian Jack, aged about a century, was mechanically sawing firewood in the hot, sickly sunshine. This is one of the jobs that it takes a man of four or five score years to perform ungrudgingly; and, to any illuminated mind, the secret of these old fellows' greatness is very plain. Bathing, though an ancient heresy, has been of strictly local prevalence, and, for the best of reasons, of transient continuance. Our relapse belongs to the present generation. Though our better-class grandsires understood no science unconnected with the gloves, a marvellous instinct taught them the unwholesomeness of sluicing away that panoply of dirt which is Nature's own defence against the microbe of imbecility, and which, indeed, was the only armour worn by the formidable Berserkers, from whom some of them claimed descent. We have done it however (at least, we say so), whilst our social inferiors have held on to the old-time religion (at least, we say so, here again); wherefore——
"I say, Mr. Collins," faltered Ida, breaking in on my reflections, "I picked up this little buckle aside o' your b-d; it's come off o' the back o' your tr——rs. I'll sew it on for you any time, for I notice you're bothered with them slippin' down. O, Mr. Collins!"—and the poor unlovely face was suddenly distorted with anguish and wet with tears—"ain't Mrs. Bodyzart wicked to put a slur on me like that? There ain't one word o' truth in it; I'd say the same if I was to die to-night; an' you may believe me or believe me not, but I'm tellin' the truth. Far be it, indeed!"
"Hush! Stop crying, Ida! Don't look round—Mrs. Beaudesart's watching you from the window, over there. You poor thing! you should n't trouble yourself over what anybody says. Did you feed Pup this morning?"
"I give him a whole milk-dish full o' scraps; but if people tells the truth, there's nobody in the world can say black is the white o' my eye; an' you may believe me or believe me not"——
"You'll need to give Pup a drink, Ida."