This brief dialogue will account for much disquietude which subsequently befell our ill fated Dumps. People met him, he could not imagine why, with a broad grin on their features. As they passed they whispered to each other, and the words "inimitable," "clever creature," "irresistibly comic," evidently applied to himself, reached his ears.
Dumps looked more serious than ever; but the greater his gravity, the more the people smiled, and one young lady actually laughed in his face as she said aloud, "Oh, that mock heroic tragedy look is so like him!"
Sighmon sighed for the seclusion of number three, Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road.
One morning his landlady announced, with broader grin than usual, that a gentleman desired to speak with him; he grumbled, but submitted, and the gentleman was announced.
"My name, sir, is Opie," said the stranger; "I am quite delighted to see you here. You intend gratifying the good people of Tewksbury of course?"
"Gratifying! what can you mean?"
"If your name is announced, there'll not be a box to be had."
"I always look after my own boxes, I can tell you," replied Dumps.
"By all means, you will come out here of course?"
"Come out? to be sure, I sha'n't stay within doors always."