into it a group, at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of November.
It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers, and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses, commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow old England up alive, but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. At which point, the figure in it gasping, “O Lord! O dear me! I am shaken!” adds, “How de do, my dear friend, how de do?” Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his grand-daughter Judy as body-guard.
“Mr. George, my dear friend,” says grandfather Smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, “how de do? You're surprised to see me, my dear friend.”
“I should hardly have been more surprised to see your friend in the city,” returns Mr. George.
“I am very seldom out,” pants Mr. Smallweed. “I haven't been out for many months. It's inconvenient—and it comes expensive. But I longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?”
“I am well enough,” says Mr. George. “I hope you are the same.”
“You can't be too well, my dear friend.” Mr. Smallweed takes him by both hands. “I have brought my grand-daughter Judy. I couldn't keep her away. She longed so much to see you.”
“Hum! She bears it calmly!” mutters Mr. George.
“So we got a hackney cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried me here, that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment! This,” says grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation, and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, “is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person,” the other bearer, “we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this person.”
Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil, with a glance of considerable terror, and a half-subdued “O Lord! O dear me!” Nor is his apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason; for Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black velvet cap before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand, with much of the air of a dead shot, intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species.
“Judy, my child,” says Grandfather Smallweed, “give the person his twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done.”
The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a “Mission” for holding horses and calling coaches, receives his twopence with anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and retires.
“My dear Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed, “would you be so kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and I am an old man, and I soon chill. O dear me!”
His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
