This was all very well, and Mrs. Dibble would perhaps not have complained had the showman taken his departure after the first visit, and not presented himself for renewed charity; but he came again and again, and Mrs. Dibble and her husband had serious disagreements about it. The lodgers were scandalised at the visits of this low person and his dawg, and one of them had given up his rooms at a day’s notice because he had seen this friend of Dibble’s going through a performance with his dog, and begging coppers, in a back street.
Dibble had appealed to the showman to leave the neighbourhood, and had bribed him too. But Digby Martin, alias Digger, alias Smith, knew a trick worth two of that. He only spent the bribe in drink, and came back to Still Street and abused Mrs. Dibble for being proud and stuck up.
To think that she should come to this, with her boarding-school education and her semi-architectural contracting father; it was a blow which Mrs. Dibble could not possibly have dreamed of, and she upbraided herself for her weakness in following Dibble and releasing him from his degraded position.
“He never asked you, marm,” said the showman, with a drunken leer. “It wash not our wish you should come and sheek ush out—you old catamaran!”
“Catamaran!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, dashing the tears from her eyes. “Catamaran!—Dibble, if you don’t punch that breuth head I will—so there!”
“Then I must do it, I suppose,” said Dibble. “Now, look’e ’ere, friend,” said Dibble; “I baint goin’ to stand any more o’ this; so clear out.”
“Dy’e hear that, Momush?” said the showman; “we’re to clear out,” and thereupon the drunken magician prepared for the coming engagement.
There was the shank-end of a leg of mutton on the table. Dibble, nodding to his wife to make her comprehend his plan, took up the bone and held it to the “dawg’s” nose. Momus immediately stood upon her hind-legs and followed Dibble to the back kitchen, where she was speedily locked in with her supper.
The showman, hardly comprehending this scheme for removing the protector, by whose side he was so valiant, darted towards the door before Dibble had time to turn round; but not before Mrs. Dibble had time to insert her arm between the drunkard and Dibble, the result of which was that the magician rolled over, and Dibble was saved the pain and trouble of knocking his old friend down himself.
It was an easy matter to put the showman into the street after this, and when a policeman came up Momus was let out, to walk on her hind-legs, by the side of the man in blue.