“I tell you,” said the latter, in a drunken voice, “that I w–will go out!”
“Come, Ned, not to-night; you can go to-morrow” said Barret soothingly, yet maintaining his hold of his friend.
“W–why not? ain’t night the best time to—to—be jolly?—eh! L–me go, I shay.”
He made a fierce struggle at this point; and Barret, ceasing to expostulate, seized him with a grasp that he could not resist, and dragged him forcibly, yet without unnecessary violence, into the room.
Next instant the door was shut with a bang and locked; so Willie Willders descended to the street, and turned his face homewards, moralising as he went on the evils of drink.
It was a long way to Notting Hill; but it was not long enough to enable Willie to regain his wonted nonchalance. He had seen and heard too much that night to permit of his equilibrium being restored. He pursed his mouth several times into the form of a round O, and began “Rule Britannia”; but the sounds invariably died at the part where the “charter of the land” is brought forward. He tried “The Bay of Biscay, O!” with no better success, never being able to get farther than “lightning’s vivid powers,” before his mind was up in the clouds, or in Mr Tippet’s garret, or out on the Archimedes-Lever Railway.
Thus wandering in dreams he reached home, talked wildly to his anxious mother, and went to bed in a state of partial insanity.