"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 pashint 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 passe: 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 glasses 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 arsenic 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 tit as tus.""If _you_ was a gardener, you'd feel for the bulbs, not for the varmin,"remonstrated Maxley rather arrogantly.
