“What are you doing there?” shouted the fallen man. “I’ll have a law passed to get the likes of you transported for life!”
He tried to rise, but found that he could not, and began to swear.
Then Mrs. Weldon pushed forward.
“Thomas!” she cried, in a voice harsh with indignation, “do you know where you be? and to whom you speak, you ill-conditioned tadpole?”
“I know well enough. I’m on the road—and I’ve hurt my leg somehow.”
“Do you know what you be?” again exclaimed Mrs. Weldon.
“I should think I did. I’m a free and enlightened elector.”
“Look up, Thomas Leveridge, from where you lie, stopping your little Rosie on the way to her grave.”
“Ah!” threw in the woman from the toll-gate, “if you, her own father, won’t come home to see your own sick and dying child, we, who’re no relations, must bury her without consideration of you.”
Then up came the companion of the prostrate man, who by this time had mastered the ass.