SKETCH FROM A STUDY WINDOW.
I listens, and says to myself, “That’s some one in pain or I’m a Dutchman.” So I goes closer to their wall and ’ears them groans and smells burnin’.
So knowin’ as somethink were wrong I ’urries to their door and knocks, but no one a-comin’, I says, “They’re all gone out,” and was a-goin’ away, for I didn’t ’ear no more groans, but I smelt the burnin’; so I says, “No doubt I shall only get insults for my pains, but I’ll try and go in and see what’s amiss.” So I makes my way round to their back door, as were only on the latch, and in I goes, and the smell of burnin’ was downright sickenin’; I goes straight into the front kitchen, and there was old ’Opwood a-layin’ in the fender a-roastin’ as ’ad fell out of ’is chair in a fit.
I ’auls ’im up, and never did see sich a sight as one side of ’is face and all ’is neck and shoulder. The boy jest then come round with the eight o’clock beer, so I ’ollers to ’im to run for a doctor, and I got ’old ’Opwood some’ow into ’is chair, as was quite insensible.
As luck would ’ave it, the doctor jest round the corner were at ’ome, and come at once, and we got the old man’s burns dressed, as I considers there’s nothink finer than whitin’, as the doctor agreed to.
If you’d seen that old Mother ’Opwood’s face and ’er daughters, when they come in jest on ten and found me a-lookin’ arter that old man, as we’d got up on to a sofy in the front parlour.
She begun to scream and holler at fust, and then said as I’d been and done it.
I wasn’t the least put out with ’er, but only says to ’er daughters, “Keep ’er quiet”; which they did by draggin’ on ’er up-stairs, where they kep’ ’er, and I must say, as they spoke werry ’andsome to me, as stopped along with the old man till jest on twelve.
I didn’t think as the old man would ’ave lived thro’ it, but he did, and ’ad his senses back, and able for to talk by the end of the week, and told us as he remembered a-pitchin’ forard ag’in the bars a-tryin’ to get a light for ’is pipe.