Part 33 (2/2)
”Ay, I hear ye, young man, a-laughing at your own sport,” said Maxley, winking his eye; ”but 'tain't the biggest mouth as catches the most. You sits yander fit to bust; but (with a roar like a lion) ye never offers _me_ none on't, neither sup nor bit.”
At this sudden turn of Mr. Maxley's wit, light and playful as a tap of the old English quarter-staff, they were a little staggered; all but Edward, who laughed and supplied him zealously with sandwiches.
”You're a gentleman, you are,” said Maxley, looking full at Sampson and Alfred to point the contradistinction.
Having thus disposed of his satirists, he contemplated the sandwiches with an inquiring and philosophic eye. ”Well,” said he, after long and thoughtful inspection, ”you gentlefoiks won't die of hard work; your sarvants must cut the very meat to fit your mouths.” And not to fall behind the gentry in a great and useful department of intelligence, he made precisely one mouthful of each sandwich.
Mrs. Dodd was secretly amazed, and, taking care not to be noticed by Maxley, said confidentially, _”Monsieur avait bien raison; le souris a pa.s.se: par la._”
The plate cleared, and washed down with a tumbler of port, Maxley resumed, and informed the doctor that the mouse was at this moment in his garden eating his bulbs. ”And I be come here to put an end to her, if I've any luck at all.”
Sampson told him he needn't trouble. ”Nature has put an end to her as long as her body.”
Mr. Maxley was puzzled for a moment, then opened his mouth from ear to ear in a guffaw that made the gla.s.ses ring. His humour was perverse. He was wit-proof and fun-proof; but at a feeble jest would sometimes roar like a lion inflated with laughing-gas. Laughed he ever so loud and long, he always ended abruptly and without gradation--his laugh was a clean spadeful dug out of Merriment. He resumed his gravity and his theme all in an instant. ”White a.r.s.enic she won't look at for I've tried her; but they tell me there's another sweetmeat come up, which they call it striek nine.”
”Hets! let the poor beasty alone. Life's as sweet t.i.t as tus.”
”If _you_ was a gardener, you'd feel for the bulbs, not for the varmin,”
remonstrated Maxley rather arrogantly.
”But bein' a man of sceince, I feel for th' higher organisation. Mice are a part of Nature, as much as market-gardeners.”
”So be stoats, and adders, and doctors.”
Sampson appealed: ”Jintlemen, here's a pretty pas.h.i.+nt: reflects on our lairned profission, and it never cost him a guinea, for the dog never pays.”
”Don't let my chaff choke ye, doctor. That warn't meant for _you_ altogether. So if you _have_ got a little bit of that 'ere about you----”
”I'm not a ratcatcher, my man: I don't go with dith in my pocket, like the surgeons that carry a lancet. And if I had Murder in both pockets, you shouldn't get any. Here's a greedy dog! got a thousand pounds in the bank, and grudges his healer a guinea, and his mouse a stand-up bite.”
”Now, who have been a telling you lies?” inquired Maxley severely.
”My missus, for a farthing. I'm not a thousand-pound man; I'm a nine-hundred-pound man; and it's all safe at Hardie's.” Here he went from his roar to his whisper, ”I don't hold with Lunnon banks; they be like my missus's eggs: all one outside, and the rotten ones only known by breaking. Well (loud) I _be_ pretty close, I don't deny it; but (confidentially) my missus beats me. I look twice at a penny; but she looks twice at both sides of a halfpenny before she will let him go: and it's her being so close have raised all this here bobbery; and so I told her; says I, 'Missus, if you would but leave an end of a dip, or a paring of cheese, about your cupboard, she would hide at home; but you hungers her so, you drives her afield right on atop o' my roots.' 'Oh,'
says my missus, 'if _I_ was to be as wasteful as _you_ be, where should _we_ be come Christmas day? Every tub on its own bottom,' says she; 'man and wife did ought to keep theirselves to theirselves, she to the house, and I to the garden.' 'So be it, says I, 'and by the same toaken, don't let me catch them ”Ns” in my garden again, or I'll spoil their clucking and scratching,' says I, 'for I'll twist their dalled necks: ye've got a yard,' says I, 'and a roost, and likewise a turnpike, you and your poultry: so bide at home the lot, and don't come a scratching o' me,'
and with that we had a ripput; and she took one of her pangs; and then I behoved to knock under; and that is allus the way if ye quarrel with woman-folk; they are sworn to get the better of ye by hook or by crook.
Now dooe give me a bit of that ere, to quiet this here, as eats me up by the roots and sets my missus and me by the ears.”
”Justum ac tenacem propositi virum,” whispered Alfred to Edward.
Sampson told him angrily to go to a certain great personage.
”Not afore my betters,” whispered Mr. Maxley, smit with a sudden respect for etiquette ”Won't ye, now?”
”I'll see ye hanged first, ye miserly old a.s.sa.s.sin.”
”Then I have nothing to thank _you_ for,” roared Maxley, and made his adieux, ignoring with marked contempt the false physician who declined to doctor the foe of his domestic peace and crocuses.
<script>