“‘Willum.’”
There was no resisting such arguments. Mrs Stoutley smiled through her tears as she accepted the money. Captain Wopper rose, crammed the empty canvas bag into his pocket, and hastily retired, with portions of the bonnet attached to him.
“Susan,” said Mrs Stoutley, on the maid answering her summons, “we shall start for London tomorrow, or the day after, so, pray, set about packing up without delay.”
“Very well, ma’am,” replied Susan, whose eyes were riveted with an expression of surprised curiosity on the cane-bottomed chair.
“It is my bonnet Susan,” said the lady, looking in the same direction with a sad smile. “Captain Wopper sat down on it by mistake. You had better remove it.”
To remove it was a feat which even Susan, with all her ready wit and neatness of hand, could not have accomplished without the aid of brush and shovel. She, therefore, carried it off chair and all, to the regions below, where she and Gillie went into convulsions over it.
“Oh! Susan,” exclaimed the blue spider, “wot would I not have given to have seed him a-doin’ of it! Only think! The ribbons, flowers, and straw in one uniwarsal mush! Wot a grindin’ there must ave bin! I heer’d the Purfesser the other day talkin’ of wot he calls glacier-haction—how they flutes the rocks an’ grinds in a most musical way over the boulders with crushin’ wiolence; but wot’s glacier haction to that?”
Susan admitted that it was nothing; and they both returned at intervals in the packing, during the remainder of that day, to have another look at the bonnet-débris, and enjoy a fresh explosion over it.