“Draw?” Pasco rubbed his hands and looked round. “It’ll draw getting on for fifteen hundred pound. If that bain’t drawin’, show me what is!”
This announcement produced a great effect.
“To go back to the p’int,” said the clarionet. “It would be a comfort to us all if you’d give us your ideas on the matter of the fire. You see, we’re all abroad.”
“I wouldn’t hurt nobody’not a fly. I was always tender-hearted,” said Pasco. “Besides, you’d talk.”
“We are all friends,” urged the bassoon. “You see, coals don’t as a rule set alight to themselves, nor wool, nor hides neither.”
“That’s what I’ve said all along,” observed the second fiddle. “Someone must ha’ done it. The question is’who?”
“I’ll have another thimbleful of punch,” said the bass viol. “It’s uncommon good, and does credit to all parties’
‘Come let’s drink, and drown all sorrow,
For perchance we may not’
For perchance we may not meet here to-morrow.’”