Exeunt arm-in-arm through window, to stop band.
Enter CAPTAIN PLUNGER, led by WAITER, L.
WAITER. This is the public room, sir.
CAPT. Oh, good gracious, do send some one out to stop that very brassy band. (it stops)
WAITER. The band, sir? Oh, that’s nothing. You should hear the Christy Minstrels—them as never play in London, sir—the two men with the harp and fiddle, the blind man with the accordion, the woman with the tambourine, the lad with the tin whistle, the three foreign girls with the two banjoes and a drum, the Punch and Judy Show, the bagpipes, and the barrel-organs With the monkeys, all agoing at once. It makes it very lively, sir.
CAPT. Yes, deadly lively.
WAITER. Dumpington is very musical.
CAPT. Then, Dumpington is very different from its musicians.
WAITER. It’s the children what they play to, sir. We’ve a large family on the ground floor just recovering from the measles, a small family on the floor above as have just had the whooping cough—oh, in the night, sir, they whoops awful—and a middling family in the next room what’s just halfway through the scarlet fever; and a very nice attack they’re having.
CAPT. Heaven preserve us! then is Dumpington a hospital?