“Ay, Tot, but it’s an old story that, an’ a long one.”
“Then you’ll have to tell it to me, daddy, and begin at once,” said Tottie, leaving the Bu’ster—who was more entitled to his nickname on that evening than he had ever been in all his life,—and sitting down beside her father on the floor.
“Come, let’s have fair exchange,” said Gaff, pushing his wife towards Billy, who grasped his mother round her ample waist, and pulled her down upon his knee!
“You’re so big and strong an’ handsome,” said Mrs Gaff, running her fingers through her son’s voluminous locks, while a few tears tumbled over her cheeks.
“Mother,” said Billy with a gleeful look, “give me a slap on the face; do, there’s a good old woman; I want to feel what it’s like now, to see if I remember it!”
“There!” cried Mrs Gaff, giving him a slap, and no light one—a slap that would have floored him in days of yore; “you deserve it for calling me an old woman.”
Mrs Gaff followed up the slap with a hug that almost choked her son.
“Make less noise, won’t you?” cried Tottie. “Don’t you see that daddy’s going to begin his story?”
Silence being with difficulty obtained, Gaff did begin his story, intending to run over a few of the leading facts regarding his life since he disappeared, but, having begun, he found it impossible to stop, all the more so that no one wanted to stop him. He became so excited, too, that he forgot to take note of time, and his audience were so interested that they paid no attention whatever to the Dutch clock with the horrified countenance, which, by the way, looked if possible more horrified than it used to do in the Bu’ster’s early days. Its preliminary hissing and frequent ringings were unheeded; so were the more dignified admonitions of the new clock; so was the tea-kettle, which hissed with the utmost fury at being boiled so long, but hissed in vain, for it was allowed to hiss its entire contents into thin air, and then to burn its bottom red hot! In like manner the large pot of potatoes evaporated its water, red-heated its bottom, and burned its contents to charcoal.
This last event it was that aroused Mrs Gaff.