Charlie opened the window as he spoke, took hold of the bundle, and discharged it into the back yard.
“There,” he said, sitting down at the table, “that will prove an object of interest to the cats all night, and a subject of surprise to good Mrs Butt in the morning. Now, Zook,” he added, when his guest was fairly at work taking in cargo, “I want to ask you—have you any objection to emigrate to America?”
“Not the smallest,” he said, as well as was possible through a full mouth. “Bein’ a orphling, so to speak, owin’ to my never ’avin’ ’ad a father or mother—as I knows on—there’s nothin’ that chains me to old England ’cept poverty.”
“Could you do without drink?”
“Sca’sely, sir, seein’ the doctors say that man is about three parts—or four, is it?—made up o’ water; I would be apt to grow mummified without drink, wouldn’t I, sir?”
“Come, Zook—you know that I mean strong drink—alcohol in all its forms.”
“Oh, I see. Well, sir, as to that, I’ve bin in the ’abit of doin’ without it so much of late from needcessity, that I don’t think I’d find much difficulty in knocking it off altogether, if I was to bring principle to bear.”
“Well, then,” continued Charlie, ”(have some more ham?) I have just conceived a plan. I have a friend in America who is a reformed drunkard. His father in this country is also, I hope, a reformed drunkard. There is a good man out there, I understand, who has had a great deal to do with reformed drunkards, and he has got up a large body of friends and sympathisers who have determined to go away into the far west and there organise a total abstinence community, and found a village or town where nothing in the shape of alcohol shall be admitted except as physic.
“Now, I have a lot of friends in England who, I think, would go in for such an expedition if—”
“Are they all reformed drunkards, sir?” asked Zook in surprise, arresting a mass of sausage in its course as he asked the question.