"I shan't wait about, all night for him," cried a diminutive gentleman disguised in a coalheaver's hat worn jockey-fashion, who, seizing Tweasle by the collar, lifted him from the ground, and giving him a shake that was sufficient to render any human nerves unsteady for eternity, asked the tottering man in a voice of angry expostulation, "Why the devil he couldn't stand still?"
Too terrified to offer the slightest opposition, the unhappy Tweasle endeavoured to obey, which spirit of accommodation was repaid by the most scrupulous attentions. With a delicate dexterity that scarcely acquainted the owner of the abstraction, everything that his pockets contained was removed without unnecessary delay; and Tweasle was beginning to hope that the robbers would be content with their booty, when one of the fellows, anxious to have his clothes also, told him in the slang phraseology to undress, by shouting,
"Come, skin yourself."
"Skin myself!" cried Tweasle, understanding the words literally, and bounding from the place in horror of what appeared to him a refinement on even fictitious barbarity. "Skin myself!—You can't mean it. I couldn't do it, if you'd give me the world.—It's impossible!—Oh, heavens!"
"No flash,—it won't do,—you'll undress," said the taller of the three with a calmness that thrilled his auditor.
"Oh! good gentlemen," continued Tweasle, wishing to touch their hearts by saying something pathetic, "do consider I'm a married man!—think of my poor wife!—think of my poor wife!"
"Carry her that 'ere with my compliments," cried the beggar, dashing his fist into Tweasle's face; an act which was received by the rest as an excellent joke.
"It will do you no good to ill-use a fellow-creature," replied Tweasle distinctly, as though the blow had refreshed him. "Don't think I shall resist; take what you please; only, as you are a man—in human form—in this world and in the next——"
"Sugar me! You're just agoing it nicely!" interrupted the mendicant. "I'm blowed if we pads don't teach more vartey than a bench of bishops. Never in all my born life borrowed on a friend that the beggar didn't funk pious and grunt gospel."
"But it is a natural impossibility for any man to skin himself."