of Pennibacker the tin extinguisher of Jericho? As Hamlet somewhere says, why did you leave that Primrose Hill of clover, to go to grass on Wormwood Scrubs?”

[Pg 31]

[Pg 31]

“I entreat you, Basil—I supplicate, my dearest boy, that you desist! You”—

“All right, my dear lady, all right, and got the receipt. What I meant to say was this. You sacrificed yourself for the good of your family?” And Basil Pennibacker, with wrinkled forehead, looked inquiringly about, gesticulating as though chewing his emotion. “Didn’t you?”

“I did, Basil, I did; but don’t grieve for that—I can be resigned; I have been resigned.”

“Like a tame lamb,” said Basil, bursting into metaphor, “like a tame lamb you wreathed your brow with orange flowers, and in the very handsomest manner gave yourself away. Can I forget it? Ought I to forget it? Ought my sisters to forget it? Never. You married our destroyer-in-law—pardon my feelings, my dear madam; as your dutiful son I must call him so: you married our cannibal-in-law, to make the fortunes of your innocent orphans? Did you not?”

“I did, Basil,” said Mrs. Jericho, and she shuddered. “Your father knows I did.”

“In which case, madam, as one of those orphans, it is my first duty to take care that your intentions are honourably carried out. Now, madam, can I see Mr. Jericho?”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Jericho, “he is not yet up.”

“And nearly one o’clock—what an insult”—and Basil pointed towards the sun—“what a marked insult to that respectable luminary. Never mind. We’ll hold a little bed of justice in this matter. For I do assure you, my dear lady, I tremble for myself; I do indeed. I never was so disloyal in all my life; never.”

Let not Mr. Basil Pennibacker suffer in the opinion of the faithful subject. That young gentleman—it was his whim, his characteristic mode of speech—adopted the word disloyalty as his synonym of poverty.

“My good sir,”—we give in the way of illustration a speech of Basil’s to an earnest tailor—“my good sir, you know I always desire to respect the constituted authorities. I always like to[Pg 32] have their images about me. But my good sir, I have not seen the face of the monarch, sir, no not on the smallest piece of silver, for a natural 

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