Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/276

"I do: what of that?"

"You know he's been to London, too?"

"Yes, and what of that?"

"Well! Look you here: I only know it doesn't look well."

"What doesn't look well?"

"Why, it doesn't look well for Ted to run after her, and then to bring her back with him; now, does it?"

"Why not?"

"Why not! Why, it looks as if there must be something in it."

"In what?"

"Why, as Harry the Eighth said, just after the French Revolution, 'I'll tell you what it is,' said he, 'if—'"

"Never mind what Harry the Eighth said! I want to hear what you say."

"Well, but this is a case in point. 'If,' said he, 'honourable gentlemen think that I'm to be done in this way, I must fructify their intellects a little.'"

"Never mind fructifying!—give me a plain answer to a plain question."

"He never did such a thing in his life!" observed Pokey.

"Pokey," said Obadiah, gravely; "what would you have been if it hadn't been for me?"

"What do you mean?" demanded Pokey, indignantly, for he felt that he was quite as good a man as Obadiah, who never in his life had twopence that could be said to be his own; "what should I have been if it hadn't been for you?"

"Aye! what would you have been if it hadn't been for me? Look you here, now; I'll tell you: you'd have been like one of the rattlesnakes in the wilderness; you wouldn't have had a fructifying idea about you."

"Well," said Quocks, "but what have you to say against the character of Mrs. Sound?"

"What have I to say against her character?"

"Aye! You said just now that it didn't look well—that there must be something in it, and that if she were not married, she ought to be. Now, I just want to know what you mean by all this?"

"You do, do you? Well, then, just look you here: when I said that if she and Teddy Rouse were not married, they ought to be, I meant what I said, and do you mean to say they ought not?"

"But what did you mean to insinuate?"

"What did I mean to insinuate? Why, of course, that they ought to be married."

"And why?"

"Why! When Peter the Great fructified the Greeks—"

"Never mind Peter the Great: the question is, why ought they to be married?"

"I was going to tell you. Peter—"

"I wont have it. Answer my question."

"'Answer my question.' Are you one of the ragged aristocracy? Do