“O, you lost her, did you?” said the clerk. “’Ope she was insured?”
No answer being returned to this sally, Huish, still brimming over with vanity and conversation, struck into another subject.
“I’ve a good mind to read you my letter,” said he. “I’ve a good fist with a pen when I choose, and this is a prime lark. She was a barmaid I ran across in Northampton; she was a spanking fine piece, no end of style; and we cottoned at first sight like parties in the play. I suppose I spent the chynge of a fiver on that girl. Well, I ’appened to remember her nyme, so I wrote to her, and told her ’ow I had got rich, and married a queen in the Hislands, and lived in a blooming palace. Such a sight of crammers! I must read you one bit about my opening the nigger parliament in a cocked ’at. It’s really prime.”
The captain jumped to his feet. “That’s what you did with the paper that I went and begged for you?” he roared.
It was perhaps lucky for Huish—it was surely in the end unfortunate for all—that he was seized just then by one of his prostrating accesses of cough; his comrades would have else deserted him, so bitter was their resentment. When the fit had passed, the clerk reached out his hand, picked up the letter, which had fallen to the earth, and tore it into fragments, stamp and all.
“Does that satisfy you?” he asked sullenly.
“We’ll say no more about it,” replied Davis.
[2] Fei is the hill banana.
[3] By-and-by.