Hard Cash Part 33

"Me quarrel with my man! We haven't never been disagreeable, not once, since we went to church a pair and came back a couple. I don't say but what we mayn't have had a word or two at odd times, as married folk will."

"And the last time you had a word or two--y' infairnal quibbler--was it just before your last spasm, eh?"

"Well, it might; I am not gainsaying that: but you said quarrel, says you. 'Quarrel' it were your word; and I defy all Barkton, gentle and simple, to say as how me and my master----"

"Whisht! whisht! Now, jintlemen, ye see what the great coming sceince--the sceince of Healing--has to contind with. The dox are all fools, but one: and the pas.h.i.+nts are lyres, ivery man Jack. N' listen me; y' have got a disease that you can't eradicate; but you may muzzle it for years, and die of something quite different when your time's up."

"Like enough, sir. If _you_ please, ma'am, Dr. Stephenson do blame my indigestion for it."

"Dr. Stephenson's an a.s.s."

"Dear heart, how cantankerous you be. To be sure Dr. Osmond he says no: it's muscular, says he."

"Dr. Osmond's an ijjit. List me; You mustn't grizzle about money; you mustn't gobble, nor drink your beer too fast."

"You are wrong, doctor; I never drink no beer: it costs----"

"Your catlap, then. And above all, no grizzling! Go to church whenever you can without losing a farthing. It's medicinal; soothes the brain, and takes it off worldly cares. And have no words with your husband, or he'll outlive you; it's his only chance of getting the last word. Care killed a cat, a nanimal with eight lives more than a chatterbox. If you worry or excite your brain, little Maxley, you will cook your own goose--by a quick fire."

"Dear heart, these be unked sayings. Won't ye give me nothing to make me better, sir?"

"No, I never tinker; I go to the root: you may buy a vile of chlorofm and take a puff if you feel premonory symps: but a quiet brain is your only real chance. Now slope, and send the male screw."

"Anan?"

"Your husband."

"That I will, sir. Your sarvant, doctor; your sarvant, ma'am; sarvant, all the company."

Mrs. Dodd hoped the poor woman had nothing very serious the matter.

"Oh, it is a mortal disease," replied Sampson, as cool as a cuc.u.mber.

"She has got angina pictoris or brist-pang, a disorder that admirably eximplifies the pretinsions of midicine t' seeince." And with this he dashed into monologue.

Maxley's tall gaunt form came slouching in, and traversed the floor, pounding it with heavy nailed boots. He seated himself gravely at Mrs.

Dodd's invitation, took a handkerchief out of his hat, wiped his face, and surveyed the company, grand and calm. In James Maxley all was ponderous: his head was huge, his mouth, when it fairly opened, revealed a chasm, and thence issued a voice naturally stentorian by its volume and native vigour; but, when the owner of this incarnate ba.s.soon had a mind to say something sagacious, he sank at once from his habitual roar to a sound scarce above a whisper; a contrast mighty comical to hear, though on paper _nil._

"Well, what is it Maxley! Rheumatism again?"

"No, that it ain't," bellowed Maxley defiantly.

"What then? Come, look sharp."

"Well, then, doctor, I'll tell you. I'm sore troubled--with--a--mouse."

This malady, announced in the tone of a proclamation, and coming after so much solemn preparation, amused the party considerably, although parturient mountains had ere then produced muscipular abortions.

"A mouse!" inquired Sampson disdainfully. "Where? Up your sleeve? Don't come to me: go t' a sawbones and have your arm cut off. I've seen 'em mutilate a pas.h.i.+nt for as little."

Maxley said it was not up his sleeve, worse luck.

On this Alfred hazarded a conjecture. "Might it not have gone down his throat? Took his potato-trap for the pantry-door. Ha! ha!"

"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.