Strutting backwards and forwards also, sometimes before the young lady in muslin and sometimes behind her, was a gaunt, greyish-looking dog, dressed up in military costume, and occasionally stopping to go through little bits of military exercise.
Three flaming and spluttering naphtha lamps cast a flickering uncertain light upon the singular scene, making the surrounding darkness all the darker.
By-and-by the man at the organ laid down his drum-stick, and, taking up a long whip, came to the top of the ladder, and after cracking the whip in a grave, solemn sort of fashion, he struck the spangled lady in the picture, and said in a loud voice,—
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, be in time, be in time! there be no time to lose! we be just a-goin’ to commence! The mysterious Lady of the North and the hemmernent Wizard—the greatest wonder in Europe! The wonderful basket trick, or the mysterious secret, is pronounced by all who ’ave seen it to be the greatest feat——”
There is no knowing how much more the speaker would have said concerning the marvels of this famous exhibition had he not been interrupted by three terrible screams, one following the other in rapid and startling succession, and uttered by a stout woman in the crowd, who was looking up at Dibble and fighting the air above her head with two very short arms in a most alarming manner.
“Oh, here’s a lark—the old woman’s drunk,” said a boy, throwing his hat up into the drizzly, mizzly air.
“Pat her on the back,” said an excited woman with a baby in her arms.
“Let me alone—let me alone!” at length Mrs. Dibble exclaimed, beating her way through the crowd, and mounting the Temple steps amidst roars of laughter and shouts of applause.
The gentleman with the whip became suddenly very much agitated, and when he saw the woman approaching the platform, he fairly turned round and bolted into the Temple.
Seeing this, a crowd rushed up after the old lady; but “Christabel,” the showman’s daughter, seized the whip which Dibble had dropped, called “Father” lustily, and began to defend the pass.