“A many years,” remarked Mrs Bags, without turning her head, and still smiling pleasantly, “have I lived in gentlemen’s families—” Here this fragment of autobiography was terminated by a hiccup.
“And the champagne bottle is empty,” said Owen, handling it. “A nice sort of cook this of yours, Major. She seems to have constituted herself butler, too.”
My grandfather advanced and lifted the other bottle to his nose. “’Tis the old rum,” he ejaculated with a groan. “But if the woman has drunk all this ’twill be the death of her. Bags,” he called, “come here.”
The spouse of Mrs Bags emerged from a sort of scullery behind the kitchen—a tall bony man, of an ugliness quite remarkable, and with a very red face. He was better known by his comrades as Tongs, in allusion probably to personal peculiarities; for the length of his legs, the width of his bony hips, and the smallness of his head, gave him some distant resemblance to that article of domestic iron-mongery; but as his wife called herself Mrs Bags, and he was entered in the regimental books by that name, it was probably his real appellation.
“Run directly to Dr Fagan,” said the Major, “and request him to come here. Your wife has poisoned herself with rum.”
“’Tisn’t rum,” said Bags, somewhat thickly—“’tis fits.”
“Fits!” said my grandfather.
“Fits,” doggedly replied Mr Bags, who seemed by no means disturbed at the alleged indisposition of his wife—“she often gets them.”