"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 pashint: 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 Ibehoved 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 assassin.""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.
"Quite a passage of arms," said Edward.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dodd, "and of bludgeons and things, rather than the polished rapier. What expressions to fall from two highly educated gentlemen! Slope--Potato-trap--Sawbones--Catlap--_je n'en finirais pas._"She then let them know that she meditated a "dictionary of jargon;" in hopes that its bulk might strike terror into honest citizens, and excite an anti-jargon league to save the English language, now on the verge of dissolution.
Sampson was pleased with this threat. "Now, that is odd," said he. "Why, I am compilin' a vocabulary myself. I call 't th' ass-ass-ins'
dickshinary; showing how, by the use of mealy-mouthed and d'exotic phrases, knaves can lead fools by th' ear a vilent dith. F'r instance; if one was to say to John Bull, 'Now I'll cut a great gash in your arm and let your blood run till ye drop down senseless,' he'd take fright and say, 'Call another time!' So the profissional ass-ass-in words it thus:
'I'll bleed you from a large orifice till the occurrence of syncope.' All right sis John: he's bled from a lar j'orifice and dies three days after of th' assassin's knife hid in a sheath o' goose grease. But I'll bloe the gaff with my dictionary.""Meantime _there_ is another contribution to mine," said Mrs. Dodd.
And they agreed in the gaiety of their hearts to compare their rival Lexicons.
