“SAY IT WAS ME.”
“Jem! you rascal, get up! get up, and be hanged to you, sir; don’t you hear somebody hammering and pelting away at the street-door knocker, like the ghost of a dead postman with a tertian ague! Open it! see what’s the matter, will you?”
“Yes, sir!” responded the tame tiger of the excited and highly respectable Adolphus Casay, shiveringly emerging from beneath the bed-clothes he had diligently wrapped round his aching head, to deaden the incessant clamour of the iron which was entering into the soul of his sleep. A hastily-performed toilet, in which the more established method of encasing the lower man with the front of the garment to the front of the wearer, was curiously reversed, and the capture of the left slipper, which, as the weakest goes to the wall, the right foot had thrust itself into, was scarcely effected, ere another series of knocks at the door, and batch of invectives from Mr. Adolphus Casay, hurried the partial sacrificer to the Graces, at a Derby pace, over the cold stone staircase, to discover the cause of the confounded uproar. The door was opened—a confused jumble of unintelligible mutterings aggravated the eager ears of the shivering Adolphus. Losing all patience, he exclaimed, in a tone of thunder—
“What is it, you villain? Can’t you speak?”
“Yes, sir, in course I can.”
“Then why don’t you, you imp of mischief?”
“I’m a-going to.”
“Do it at once—let me know the worst. Is it fire, murder, or thieves?”
“Neither, sir; it’s A1, with a dark lantern.”