"And worse, Henrietta!" said the Emperor with intense emotion.
"The home! Our little home!" the Empress wailed, forgetting the size of Ribton Marches. "They are breaking up the home!"
"They are indeed, ma'am! They are. Oh yes—most certainly they are!"
"What did I say?" eloquently rejoined the Empress. "What did I always and ever say?"
Nobody seeming to have any idea, she repeated her question six or eight times, and burst into a flood of tears. The Emperor pressed her fat hands with his own, and endeavoured not to choke before a servant. He failed, however, and Mr. Harrison saw that he had won his day and secured the safety of his person. With remarkable conviction, and a fine choice of language, he therefore began to amplify.
"It begun yesterday, sir, I might say," he remarked, wringing his hands in an ostentatious manner. "It begun with them throwing me, sir, from one of your private hammicks, in which I was concealed to watch, according to your orders—throwing me out on my face, sir, flat, and laughing at what they done."
"The brutes!" sobbed the Empress. "The inhuman things! The brutes!"
"Yes, ma'am, it was nearly being my death, the heavy fall and shock. It was Mr. Rodney, I should say, what done it, with his own hands, Mrs. Veddleham standing by and laughing fit to split her sides."
"Hussy!" murmured the Empress. "Thieving hussy!"