He had a kind of everlasting grudge agin the public; which is a thing you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was that it kep' him out of society. He was continiwally sayin':
"Toby, my ambition is to go into society. The curse of my position towards the public is that it keeps me hout of society. This don't signify to a low beast of a Indian; he ain't formed for society. This don't signify to a Spotted Baby; he ain't formed for society—I am."
Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a woodpecker to eat—but all dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many half-pence that he'd carry 'em for a week together, tied up in a pocket-handkercher.
And yet he never had money. And it couldn't be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once supposed; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity towards a Indian which makes you grind your teeth at him to his face, and which can hardly hold you from goosing him audible when he's going through his war-dance—it stands to reason you wouldn't under them circumstances deprive yourself to support that Indian in the lap of luxury.
Most unexpected, the mystery came out one day at Egham races. The public was shy of bein' pulled in, and Chops was ringin' his little bell out of his drawin'-room winder, and was snarlin' to me over his shoulder as he kneeled down with his legs out at the back door—for he couldn't be shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn't accommodate his legs—was snarlin':
"Here's a precious public for you; why the devil don't they tumble up?" when a man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon and cries out:
"If there's any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery's just draw'd, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three, seven, forty-two! Three, seven, forty-two!"
I was givin' the man to the furies myself, for calling of the public's attention—for the public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in preference to the thing showed 'em; and if you doubt it, get 'em together for any individual purpose on the face of the earth, and send only two people in late and see if the whole company ain't far more interested in taking particular notice of them two than you—I say I wasn't best pleased with the man for callin' out, wasn't blessin' him in my own mind, when I see Chops's little bell fly out of the winder at a old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin' the whole secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me:
"Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me, or I'm a dead man, for I'm come into my property!"
Twelve thousand odd hundred pounds was Chops's winnins. He had bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up. The first use he made of his property was to offer to fight the Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin'-needle and the Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that amount, it went no further.