“The deuce take the mad fool,” muttered the disturbed housekeeper; then added, in a louder tone, “Ask the policeman in, and request him to take—”
“Anything you please, sir; it is rather a cold night, but as we’re all in a hurry, suppose it’s something short, sir.”
Now the original proposition, commencing with the word “take,” was meant by its propounder to achieve its climax in “a seat on one of the hall chairs;” but the liquid inferences of A1, with a dark lantern, had the desired effect, and induced a command from Mr. Adolphus Casay to the small essential essence of condensed valetanism in the person of Jim Pipkin, to produce the case-bottles for the discussion of the said A1, with the dark lantern, who gained considerably in the good opinion of Mr. James Pipkin, by requesting the favour of his company in the bibacious avocation he so much delighted in.
A1 having expressed a decided conviction that, anywhere but on the collar of his coat, or the date of monthly imprisonments, his distinguishing number was the most unpleasant and unsocial of the whole multiplication table, further proceeded to illustrate his remarks by proposing glasses two and three, to the great delight and inebriation of the small James Pipkin, who was suddenly aroused from a dreamy contemplation of two policemen, and increased service of case-bottles and liquor-glasses, by a sound box on the ear, and a stern command to retire to his own proper dormitory—the one coming from the hand, the other from the lips, of his annoyed master, who then and there departed, under the guidance of A1, with the dark lantern. After passing various lanes and weary ways, the station was reached, and there, in the full plenitude of glorious drunkenness, lay his friend, the identical Mr. Brown Bunkem, who, in the emphatic words of the inspector, was declared to be “just about as far gone as any gentleman’s son need wish to be.”
“What’s the charge?” commenced Mr. Adolphus Casay.
“Eleven shillings a bottle.—Take it out o’that, and d—n the expense,” interposed and hiccoughed the overtaken Brown Bunkem.
“Drunk, disorderly, and very abusive,” read the inspector.
“Go to blazes!” shouted Bunkem, and then commenced a very vague edition of “God save the Queen,” which, by some extraordinary “sliding scale,” finally developed the last verse of “Nix my Dolly,” which again, at the mention of the “stone jug,” flew off into a very apocryphal version of the “Bumper of Burgundy;” the lines “upstanding, uncovered,” appeared at once to superinduce the opinion that greater effect would be given to his performance by complying with both propositions. In attempting to assume the perpendicular, Mr. Brown Bunkem was signally frustrated, as the result was a more perfect development of his original horizontal recumbency, assumed at the conclusion of a very vigorous fall. To make up for this deficiency, the suggestion as to the singer appearing uncovered, was achieved with more force than propriety, by Mr. Brown Bunkem’s nearly displacing several of the inspector’s front teeth, by a blow from his violently-hurled hat at the head of that respectable functionary.
What would have followed, it is impossible to say; but at this moment Mr. Adolphus Casay’s bail was accepted, he being duly bound down, in the sum of twenty pounds, to produce Mr. Brown Bunkem at the magistrate’s office by eleven o’clock of the following forenoon. This being settled, in spite of a vigorous opposition, with the assistance of five half-crowns, four policemen, the driver of, and hackney-coach No. 3141, Mr. Brown Bunkem was conveyed to his own proper lodgings, and there left, with one boot and a splitting headache, to do duty for a counterpane, he vehemently opposing every attempt to make him a deposit between the sheets.—Seven o’clock on the following morning found Mr. Adolphus Casay at the bedside of the violently-snoring and stupidly obfuscated Brown Bunkem. In vain he pinched, shook, shouted, and swore; inarticulate grunts and apoplectic denunciations against the disturber of his rest were the only answers to his urgent appeals as to the necessity of Mr. Brown Bunkem’s getting ready to appear before the magistrate. Visions of contempt of court, forfeited bail, and consequent disbursements, flitted before the mind of the agitated Mr. Adolphus Casay. Ten o’clock came; Bunken seemed to snore the louder and sleep the sounder. What was to be done? why, nothing but to get up an impromptu influenza, and try his rhetoric on the presiding magistrates of the bench.
Influenced by this determination, Mr. Adolphus Casay started for that den of thieves and magistrates in the neighbourhood of Bow-street; but Mr. Adolphus Casay’s feelings were anything but enviable; though by no means a straitlaced man, he had an instinctive abhorrence of anything that appeared a blackguard transaction. Nothing but a kind wish to serve a friend would have induced him to appear within a mile of such a wretched place; but the thing was now unavoidable, so he put the best face he could on the matter, made his way to the clerk of the Court, and there, in a low whisper, began his explanation, that being “how Mr. Brown Bunkem”—at this moment the crier shouted—