“Never mind,” added a fourth, “I’ve got a chap training what you none on you knows, what’ll beat all the ‘thumbs’ on your grapplers.”
“No, he can’t,” exclaimed a fifth, “for Tom Thumb has got the name, and you all know the name’s everything. Tom Thumb couldn’t never shine, even in my van, ‘long side of a dozen dwarfs I knows, if this Yankee hadn’t bamboozled our Queen,—God bless her—by getting him afore her half a dozen times.”
“Yes, yes,—that’s the ticket,” exclaimed another; “our Queen patronizes everything foreign, and yet she wouldn’t visit my beautiful wax-works to save the crown of Hingland.”
“Your beautiful wax-works!” they all exclaimed, with a hearty laugh.
“Yes, and who says they haint beautiful?” retorted the other; “they was made by the best Hitalian hartist in this country.”
“They was made by Jim Caul, and showed all over the country twenty years ago,” rejoined another; “and arter that they laid five years in pawn in old Moll Wiggin’s cellar, covered with mould and dust.”
“Well, that’s a good ’un, that is!” replied the proprietor of the beautiful wax-works, with a look of disdain.
I made a move to depart, when one of the head showmen exclaimed, “Come, Mister, don’t be shabby; can you think of going without standing treat all round?”
“Why should I stand treat?” I asked.
“ ‘Cause ’tain’t every day you can meet such a bloody lot of jolly brother-showmen,” replied Mr. Wax-works.