“What don’t I?” snuffled the string. “Do you hear, Turnip? you’re a miserable cove, you are. Why can’t you be ’appy like me and my mate? We don’t give ourselves hairs; that’s why we’re ’appy.”
“And, arter all,” pursued the pipe, “that’s the sort of coves as go second-hand in the end. People ’ud think better on ’em if they didn’t think such a lot of theirselves; wouldn’t they now, mate?”
“Wouldn’t they just! What do you think of that, Turnip? You’re on’y a second-hand turnip, now, and that’s all along of being stuck-up and thinking such a lot of yourself! You won’t go off for thirty bob, you won’t see!”
“Mate!” exclaimed the pipe, presently (after I had had leisure to meditate on the foregoing philosophical dialogue), “mate, I’ll give you a riddle!”
“Go it!” said the mate.
“Why,” asked the pipe, in a solemn voice, “is a second-hand pewter-plate, stuck-up turnip, like a weskit that ain’t paid for?”
“Do you hear, Turnip? Why are you like a weskit that ain’t paid for? Do yer give it up? I do.”
“’Cos it’s on tick!” pronounced the pipe.
I could have howled to find myself the victim of such a low, villainous joke, that had not even the pretence of wit, and I could have cried to see how that greasy string wriggled and snuffled at my expense.
“My eye, mate! that’s a good ’un! Do you hear, Turnip? you’re on tick, you know, like the weskit. Oh, my eye! that’ll do, mate; another o’ them will kill me. Oh, turn it up! do you hear? On tick!— hoo, hoo, hoo! Do you hear, Turnip? tick!”