I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it), and then tried two of ’em as half-and-half, then t’other two. Altogether, I passed a pleasant evenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say: “Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part. I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains you have stood so ’ansome. I looks towards you in red wine, and I takes my leave.” Mr. Chops replied: “If you’ll just hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me down stairs, I’ll see you out.” I said I couldn’t think of such a thing, but he would have it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Madeary, and I couldn’t help thinking, as I carried him down, that it was like carrying a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion.
When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kept me close to him by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:—
“I ain’t ’appy, Magsman.”
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Chops?”
“They don’t use me well. They ain’t graceful to me. They puts me on the mantel-piece when I won’t have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me in the sideboard when I won’t give up my property.”
“Git rid of ’em, Mr. Chops.”
“I can’t. We’re in society together, and what would society say?”
“Come out of society,” says I.
“I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. When you have once got into society, you mustn’t come out of it.”
“Then, if you’ll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops,” was my remark, shaking my ed grave, “I think it’s a pity you ever went in.”