The fiddle was well improved, till the horsehair all pulled out of the bow, and it was then twisted up into a fish-line.
XVI
"How limpid you walk!" said a voice behind us, as we were making a hundred and fifty horse-power effort to reach a table whereon reposed a volume of Bacon. "What is the cause of your lameness?" It was Mrs. Partington's voice that spoke, and Mrs. Partington's eyes that met the glance we returned over our left shoulder. "Gout," said we, briefly, almost surlily. "Dear me," said she; "you are highly flavored! It was only rich people and epicacs in living that had the gout in olden times." "Ah!" we growled, partly in response, and partly with an infernal twinge, "Poor soul!" she continued, with commiseration, like an anodyne, in the tones of her voice; "the best remedy I know for it is an embarkation of Roman wormwood and lobelia for the part infected, though some say a cranberry poultice is best; but I believe the cranberries is for erisipilis, and whether either of 'em is a rostrum for the gout or not, I really don't know. If it was a fraction of the arm, I could jest know what to subscribe." We looked into her eye with a determination to say something severely bitter, because we felt allopathic just then; but the kind and sympathizing look that met our own disarmed severity, and sinking into a seat with our coveted Bacon, we thanked her. It was very evident, all the while, that she, or they, stayed, that Ike was seeing how near he could come to our lame member, and not touch it. He did touch it sometimes, but those didn't count.
XX
"I've always noticed," said Mrs. Partington on New Year's Day, dropping her voice to the key that people adopt when they are disposed to be philosophical or moral; "I've always noticed that every year added to a man's life is apt to make him older, just as a man who goes a journey finds, as he jogs on, that every mile he goes brings him nearer where he is going, and farther from where he started. I am not so young as I was once, and I don't believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, Heaven knows as well as I do, I don't want to, for I wouldn't be a centurion or an octagon, and survive my factories, and become idiomatic, by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place; and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never live to see it."
There was a smart tap on the looking-glass that hung upon the wall, followed instantly by another.
"Gracious!" said she; "what's that? I hope the glass isn't fractioned, for it is a sure sign of calamity, and mercy knows they come along full fast enough without helping 'em by breaking looking-glasses."
There was another tap, and she caught sight of a white bean that fell on the floor; and there, reflected in the glass, was the face of Ike, who was blowing beans at the mirror through a crack in the door.
XXI
"As for the Chinese question," said Mrs. Partington, reflectively, holding her spoon at "present," while the vapor of her cup of tea curled about her face, which shone through it like the moon through a mist, "it is a great pity that somebody don't answer it, though who under the canister of heaven can do it, with sich letters as they have on their tea-chists, is more than I can tell. It is really too bad, though, that some lingister doesn't try it, and not have this provoking question asked all the time, as if we were ignoramuses, and did not know Toolong from No Strong, and there never was sich a thing as the seventh commandment, which, Heaven knows, suits this case to a T, and I hope the breakers of it may escape, but I don't see how they can. The question must be answered, unless it is like a cannondrum, to be given up, which nobody of any spirit should do."