The terrified servants understood enough of this singular address to know Miss Toosypegs wished for a fire, her dinner, and her nephew. An old woman, therefore, in a gaudy Madras turban, advanced, and led the way up a rickety flight of stairs into a comfortless-looking room, with a damp, unaired odor, where, on a bed, lay the mortal remains of O. C. Toosypegs, with the darkey—whose name I may as well say at once was Cupid—giving him a most vigorous rubbing, which extorted from the dead man sundry groans and grimaces and encouraged Cupid to still further exertions.
The loaded rifle advanced to the bedside, and a second volley went off.
“Come, Horlander Toosypegs, get hup hout o’ that, lying there in this musty hold room, face and hall plastered hover with mud, which his enough to give you the rheumatism the longest day you live, without the first spark hof a fire—so it is!”
“I’m dying, Aunt Priscilla; stay with me to the last!” in the faintest whisper, responded Mr. Toosypegs, languidly opening his eyes, and then shutting them again.
“Dying? Wah, wah!” grunted Miss Priscilla, catching him by the shoulder and shaking him with no gentle hand. “Pretty corpse you’ll make, hall hover with mud, hand looks has much like dying has I do.”
“De brunderingbuss an’ de pissels war only loaded wid powder—no shot in ’em at all. ’Deed, old missus, he ain’t hurted the fustest mite, only he t’inks so.”
“Hold!” shrieked Miss Priscilla, turning fiercely upon Cupid. “You impident black nigger, you! to call me hold! Leave the room this very minute, hand never let me see your hugly, black face hagain!”
“Come—you are not hurt—get up!” said Ketura, going over to the bedside, as poor Cupid, crestfallen, slunk away. “There is not a hair of your head injured. Up with you!”
“Am I not shot?” demanded Mr. Toosypegs, bewildered. “Did the bullet not enter my brain?”
“You never had any for it to enter,” said the gipsy, encouragingly. “Look yourself; there is neither wound nor blood.”