"No, I do not, OCTAVE," replied the excellent old nut-cracker of a lady, who was making the charity stocking as nearly in the shape of a hatchet as possible. "When a young man of rebel sentiments spends all his nights in drinking lemon teas, and trying to spoil other young men's clothes in throwing such teas at them, and is only to be put down by umbrellas, and comes to his homes with cloves in his clenched fists, and has headaches on the following days, he's on his way either to political office or the gallows."
"But he hasn't done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, and reflected casually upon the late well-known Southern Confederacy."
"Don't tell me!" reasoned the fine old lady, holding up the stocking by its handle to see how much longer it must be to reach the wearer's waist. "I'm afraid you're a copperhead, OCTAVE."
"How you do cackle, OLDY!" said her son, who was very proud of her when she kept still. "You can't see anything good in MONTGOMERY, because, after the first seven or eight breakfasts with us, he said he was afraid that so many fishballs would make his head swim."
"My child," returned the old lady, thrusting an arm so far into the charity stocking that she seemed to have the wrong kind of blue worsted limb growing from one of her shoulders, "I have judged this dissipated young man exactly as though he were my own son-in-law, and know that he possesses an incendiary disposition. After the fireworks at Saint Cow's Church, on Saint VITUS'S Day, that devoted Ritualistic Christian, Mr. BUMSTEAD, came up to me in the porch, with his eyes nearly closed, on account of the solemnity of the occasion, and began feeling around my neck with both his hands. When I asked him to explain, he said that he wanted to see whether my throat was cut yet, as he had heard that we kept a Southern murderer at home. He was still very pale at what had taken place in his room over night, when he finally said 'Good-day, ladies,' to me.
"MONTGOMERY is certainly attached to me, at any rate," murmured the Gospeler, reflectively, "and has made no attempt upon my life."
"That's because his sister restrains him," asserted the mother, with a fond look. "I overheard her telling him, when she was at dinner here one day, that you might be taken for a Southerner, if you only wore dress-coat all the time and were heavily mortgaged. Withdraw her influence, and the desperate young man would tar and feather us all in our beds some night."
Falling silent after this unanswerable proof of Mr. PENDRAGON'S guilt, Mr. SIMPSON mused upon as much of the dear old nutcracker as was not hidden by the vast charity stocking. In her ruffled cap, false front, and spectacles, she was so exactly the figure one might picture Mr. JOHN STUART MILL to be, after reading his latest literary knitting on the Revolting Injustice of Masculine Society, that the Gospeler of Saint Cow's could not help feeling how perfectly useless it was to expect her to think herself capable of error.
As, whenever the Reverend OCTAVIUS gave indication of a capacity for speechless thoughtfulness, his benignant mother at once concluded that he needed an anti-bilious pill, she now made all haste to the cupboard to procure that imitation-vegetable and a glass of water. It was the neatest, best-stored Ritualistic cupboard in Bumsteadville. Above it hung a portrait of the Pope, from which the grand old Apostolic son of an infallible dogma looked knowingly down, as though with the contents of that cupboard he could get-up such a schema as would be palatable to the most skeptical Bishop in all the Oecumenical Council, and of which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a better schema, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly and sly, gave entrance to this treasury of dainties; and then what a rare array of disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The Smoked Beef, and Doughnuts, as being more sober and unemotional features of the pageant, appeared on either side the remains of a Cold Chicken, as rendering pathetic tribute to hoary age; while sturdy, reliable Hash and Fishballs reposed right and left in their mottled and rich brown coats, with a kind of complacent consciousness of having been created according to Mrs. GLASS'S standard dictum, First catch your Hair.
Gospeler SIMPSON, by natural law, alternated from this wonderful cupboard, very regularly, to another, or sister cupboard, also presided over by the good old maternal nut-cracker, wherein the energetic pill lived in its little pasteboard house next door to the crystal palace of smooth, insinuating castor oil; and passionate fiery essence of peppermint grew hot with indignation at the proximity of plebeian rhubarb and squills. In the present case he quietly took his anti-bilious globule: which, besides being a step in the direction of removing a pimple from his chin, was also intended as a kind of medical preparation for his coming services in the Ritualistic Church, where, at a certain part of the ceremonies, he was to stand on his head before the Banner of St. Alban and balance Roman candles on his uplifted feet. When the day had nearly passed, and the Vesper hour for those services arrived, he performed them with all the less rush of blood to the head for being thus prepared; yet there was still a slight sensation of congestion, and, to get rid of this, when he stepped forth from Saint Cow's in the twilight, it was to take an evening stroll along the shore of Bumsteadville pond.