CHAPTER XV
THE COCKNEY WHIPPER-IN
“WHEN will your hounds be going out again think ye, Mr. Benjamin?” inquired Samuel Strong, a country servant of all work, lately arrived at Handley Cross, as they sat round the saddle-room fire of the “Dragon Inn” yard, in company with the persons hereafter enumerated, the day after the run described in the last chapter.
Samuel Strong was just the sort of man that would be Samuel Strong. Were his master to ring his bell, and desire the waiter to tell the “Boots” to send his servant “Samuel Strong” to him, Boots would pick Sam out of a score of servants, without ever having seen him before. He was quite the southern-hound breed of domestics. Large-headed, almost lop-eared, red-haired (long, coarse, and uneven), fiery whiskers, making a complete fringe round his harvest moon of a face, with a short thick nose that looked as though it had been sat upon by a heavy person. In stature he was of the middle height, square built, and terribly clumsy.
Nor were the defects of nature at all counter-balanced by the advantages of dress, for Strong was clad in a rural suit of livery, consisting of a footman’s morning jacket of dark grey cloth, with a stand-up collar, plentifully besprinkled with large brass buttons, with raised edges, as though his master were expecting his crest from the herald’s college. Moreover, the jacket, either from an original defect in its construction, or from that propensity to shrink, which inferior clothes unfortunately have, had so contracted its dimensions that the waist-buttons were half-way up Samuel’s back, and the lower ones were just where the top ones ought to be. The shrinking of the sleeves placed a pair of large serviceable-looking hands in nervously striking relief. The waistcoat, broad blue and white stripe, made up stripe lengthways, was new, and probably the tailor, bemoaning the scanty appearance of Sam’s nether man, had determined to make some atonement to his front, for the waistcoat extended full four inches below his coat, and concealed the upper part of a very baggy pair of blue plush shorts, that were met again by very tight drab gaiters, that evidently required no little ingenuity to coax together to button. A six-shilling-hat, with a narrow silver band, and binding of the same metal, and a pair of darned white Berlin gloves, completed the costume of this figure servant.
Benjamin Brady—or “Binjimin”—was the very converse of Samuel Strong. A little puny, pale-faced, gin-drinking-looking Cockney, with a pair of roving pig-eyes, peering from below his lank white hair, cut evenly round his head, as though it had been done by the edges of a barber’s basin. Benjamin had increased considerably in his own opinion, by the acquisition of a pair of top-boots, and his appointment of whipper-in to the hounds, in which he was a good deal supported by the deference usually paid by country servants to London ones.
Like all inn saddle-rooms, the “Dragon” one was somewhat contracted in its dimensions, and what little there was, was rendered less, by sundry sets of harness hanging against the walls, and divers saddle-stands, boot-trees, knife-cleaners, broken pitchforks, and bottles with candles in their necks, scattered promiscuously around. Nevertheless, there was a fire, to keep “hot water ready,” and above the fire-place were sundry smoke-dried hand-bills of country horses for the by-gone season—“Jumper—Clever Clumsy—Barney Bodkin—Billy Button, &c.”—while logs of wood, three-legged stools, and inverted horse-pails, served the place of chairs around.
On the boiler side of the fire, away from the door—for no one has a greater regard for No. 1 than himself—sat the renowned Benjamin Brady, in a groom’s drab frock coat, reaching down to his heels, a sky-blue waistcoat, patent cord breeches, with grey worsted stockings, and slippers, airing a pair of very small mud-stained top-boots before the fire, occasionally feeling the scratches on his face, and the bites the fox inflicted on his nose the previous day—next him, sat the “first pair boy out,” a grey-headed old man of sixty, whose jacket, breeches, boots, entire person, in fact, were concealed by a long brown holland thing, that gave him the appearance of sitting booted and spurred in his night-shirt. Then came the ostler’s lad, a boy of some eight or nine years old, rolling about on the flags, playing with the saddleroom cat; and, immediately before the fire, on a large inverted horse-pail, sat Samuel Strong, while the circle was made out by Bill Brown (Dick the ostler’s one-eyed helper), “Tom,” a return post-boy, and a lad who assisted Bill Brown, the one-eyed helper of Dick the ostler—when Dick himself was acting the part of assistant waiter in the “Dragon,” as was the case on this occasion.
“When will your hounds be going out again think ye, Mr. Benjamin?” was the question put by Samuel Strong, to our sporting Leviathan.
“’Ang me if I knows,” replied the boy, with the utmost importance, turning his top-boots before the fire. “It’s precious little consequence, I thinks, ven we goes out again, if that gallows old governor of ours persists in ’unting the ’ounds himself. I’ve all the work to do! Bless ye, we should have lost ’ounds, fox, and all, yesterday, if I hadn’t rid like the werry wengeance. See ’ow I’ve scratched my mug,” added he, turning up a very pasty and much scratched countenance. “If I’m to ’unt the ’ounds, and risk my neck at every stride, I must have the wages of a ’untsman, or blow me tight, as the old ’un says, he may suit himself.”
“What’n a chap is your old gen’leman?” inquired the “first pair boy out,” who, having been in the service himself, where he might have remained if he could have kept sober, had still a curiosity to know how the world of servitude went on.
“Oh, hang’d if I knows,” replied Benjamin, “precious rum ’un I assure you. Whiles, he’s well enough—then it’s Bin this, and Bin that, and Bin you’ll be a werry great man, Bin, and such like gammon; and then the next minute, p’r’aps, he’s in a reg’lar sky-blue, swearin’ he’ll cut my liver and lights out, or bind me apprentice to a fiddler—but then I knows the old fool, and he knows he carnt do without me, so we just battle on the best way we can together,” added Ben, with a knowing toss of his head.
“You’ll have good wage I s’pose,” rejoined Samuel, with a sigh, for his “governor” only gave him ten pounds a year, and no perquisites, or “stealings” as the Americans honestly call them.
“Precious little of that I assure you,” replied Benjamin—“at least the old warment never pays me. He swears he pays it to our old ’oman; but I believe he pockets it himself, an old ram; but I’ll have a reckoning with him some of these odd days, or I’ll be off to the diggins. What’n a blackguard’s your master?” now asked Ben, thinking to get some information in return.
“Hush!” replied Samuel, astonished at Ben’s freedom of speech, a thing not altogether understood in the country.
“A bad ’un I’ll be bund,” continued the little rascal, “or he wouldn’t see you mooning about in such a rumbustical apology for a coat, with laps that scarce cover you decently;” reaching behind the aged post-boy, and taking up Mr. Samuel’s fan-tail as he spoke. “I never sees a servant in a cutty-coat, without swearing his master’s a screw. Now these droll things such as you have on, are just vot the great folks in London give their flunkeys to carry coals, and make up fires in, but never to go staring from home with. Then your country folks get hold of them, and think by clapping such clowns as you in them, to make people believe that they have other coats at home. Tell the truth now, old baggy-breeches, have you another coat of any sort?”
“Yee-as,” replied Samuel Strong, “I’ve a fustian one.”
“Vot, you a fustian coat!” repeated Ben in astonishment, “vy I thought you were a flunkey!”
“So I am,” replied Samuel, “but I looks ater a hus and shay as well.”
“Crikey!” cried Benjamin, “here’s a figure futman what looks arter a ’oss and chay—Vy you’ll be vot they call a man of ‘all vork,’ a wite nigger—a wite Uncle Tom in fact! dear me,” added he, eyeing him in a way that drew a peal of laughter from the party, “vot a curious beast you must be! I shouldn’t wonder now if you could mow?”
“With any man,” replied Samuel, thinking to astonish Benjamin with his talent,—
“And sow?”
“Yee’as and sow.”
“And ploo?” (plough).
“Never tried—dare say I could though.”
“And do you feed the pigs?” inquired Benjamin.
“Yee’as, when Martha’s away.”
“And who’s Martha?”
“Whoy she’s a widder woman, that lives a back o’ the church.—She’s a son a-board a steamer, and she goes to see him whiles.”
“Your governor’s an apothecary, I suppose by that queer button,” observed Benjamin, eyeing Sam’s coat. “Wot we call a chemist and druggist in London. Do you look after the red and green winder bottles now? Crikey, he don’t look as though he lived on physic altogether, do he?” added Benjamin, turning to Bill Brown, the helper, amid the general laughter of the company.
“My master’s a better man than ever you’ll be, you little ugly sinner,” replied Samuel Strong, breaking into a glow, and doubling a most serviceable-looking fist on his knee.
“We’ve only your word for that,” replied Benjamin, “he don’t look like a werry good ’un by the way he rigs you out. ’Ow many slaveys does he keep?”
“Slaveys,” replied Samuel, “slaveys, what be they?”
“Vy cook-maids and such like h’animals—women in general.”
“Ow, two—one to clean the house and dress the dinner, t’other to milk the cows and dress the childer.”
“Oh, you ’ave childer, ’ave you, in your ’ouse?” exclaimed Benjamin in disgust. “Well come, our’s is bad, but we’ve nothing to ekle (equal) that. I wouldn’t live where there are brats for no manner of consideration.”
“You’ve a young Misses, though, haven’t you?” inquired the aged post-boy, adding, “at least there was a young lady came down in the chay along with the old folk.”
“That’s the niece,” replied Benjamin—“a jolly nice gal she is too—often get a tissy out of her—that’s to say, she don’t give me them herself exactly, but the young men as follows her do, so it comes to the same thing in the end. She has a couple of them you see, first one pays, and then t’other. Green, that’s him of Tooley Street, gives shillings because he has plenty; then Stobbs, wot lives near Borough-bridge, gives half-crowns, because he hasn’t much. Then Stobbs is such a feller for kissin’ of the gals.—‘Be’have yourself or I’ll scream,’ I hears our young lady say, as I’m a listenin’ at the door. ‘Don’t,’ says he, kissin’ of her again, ‘you’ll hurt your throat,—let me do it for you.’ Then to hear our old cove and Stobbs talk about ’unting of an evening over their drink, you’d swear they were as mad as ’atters. They jump, and shout, and sing, and talliho! till they whiles bring the street-keeper to make them quiet.”
“You had a fine run t’other day, I hear,” observed Joe, the deputy-helper, in a deferential tone to Mr. Brady.
“Uncommon!” replied Benjamin, shrugging up his shoulders at the recollection of it, and clearing the low bars of the grate out with his toe.
“They tell me your old governor tumbled off,” continued Joe, “and lost his ’oss.”
“Werry like,” replied Benjamin with a grin, “he generally does tumble h’off. I’m dashed if it arn’t a disgrace to an ’oss to be ridden by such a lubber! A great fat beast! he’s only fit for a vater carriage.” Haw! haw! haw! haw! haw! haw! went the roar of laughter among the party; haw! haw! haw! haw! haw! pealed the second edition.
“He’s a precious old file too,” resumed the little urchin, elated at the popularity he was acquiring, “to hear him talk, I’m blow’d if you wouldn’t think he’d ride over an ’ouse, and yet somehow or other, he’s never seen after they go away, unless it be bowling along the ’ard road;—t’other mornin’ we had as fine a run as ever was seen, and he wanted to give in in the middle of it, and yesterday he stood starin’ like a stuck pig in the wood, stead of ridin’ to his ’ounds. If I hadn’t been as lively as a lark, and lept like a louse we should never have seen an ’ound no more. They’d have run slap to France, or whatever there is on the far side of the hill, if the world’s made any further that way. Well, I rides and rides, for miles and miles, as ’ard as ever the ’oss could lay legs to the ground, over everything, ’edges, ditches, gates, stiles, rivers, determined to stick by ’em,—see what a mug I’ve got with rammin’ through the briars—feels just as if I’d had it teased with a pair of wool-combs; howsomever, I did, and I wouldn’t part company with them, and the consequence was, we killed the fox—my eyes, such a wopper! longer than that,” said he, stretching out both his arms, “and as big as a bull—fierce as fury—flew at my snout—nearly bit it off—kept a hold of him though—and worried his soul out—people all pleased—farmer’s wife in particklar—offered me a drink of milk—axed for some jacky—had none, but gave me whiskey instead,—Vill any man here sky a copper for a quartern of gin?” inquired Benjamin, looking round the party. “Then who’ll stand a penny to my penny, and let me have a first go?” No one closing with either of these handsome offers, Ben took up his tops, looked at the soles, then replacing them before the fire, felt in his stable-jacket-pocket, which was lying over his own saddle, and bringing out a very short dirty old clay-pipe, he filled it out of the public tobacco-box of the saddle-room, and very complacently crossing his legs, proceeded to smoke. Before he had time to make himself sick, the first pair boy out, interrupted him by asking him what became of his master during the run.
“Oh! dashed if I know,” replied Benjamin, “but that reminds me of the best of the story.—We killed our fox you see, and there were two or three ’ossmen up, who each took a fin and I took the tail, which I stuck through my ’oss’s front, and gathering the dogs, I set off towards home, werry well pleased with all I had done. Well, after riding a very long way, axing my way, for I was quite a stranger, I came over a hill at the back of the wood, where we started from, when what should I see in the middle of a big ploughed field but the old ’un himself, and ’unting of his ’oss that had got away from him. There was the old file in his old red coat and top-boots, flounderin’ away among the stiff clay, with a hundred-weight of dirt stickin’ to his heels, gettin’ the ’oss first into one corner and then into another, and all but catchin’ hold of the bridle, when the nag would shake his head, as much as to say, ‘Not yet, old chap,’ and trot off to the h’opposite corner, the old ’un grinnin’ with h’anger and wexation, and followin’ across the deep wet ridge and furrow in his tops, reg’larly churnin’ the water in them as he went.
“Then the ’oss would begin to eat, and Jorrocks would take Bell’s Life or The Field out of his pocket, and pretend to read, sneaking nearer and nearer all the time. When he got a few yards off, the ’oss would stop and look round, as much as to say. ‘I sees you, old cock,’ and then old J. would begin coxin’—‘Whoay, my old feller, who-ay—who-ay, my old bouy,’ (Benjamin imitating his master’s manner by coaxing the old post-boy), until he got close at him again, when the ’oss would give a half-kick and a snort, and set off again at a quiet jog-trot to the far corner again, old J. grinnin’ and wowin’ wengeance against him as he went.
“At last he spied me a lookin’ at him through the high ’edge near the gate at the corner of the field, and cuttin’ across, he cried, ‘Here, Binjimin! Binjimin, I say!’ for I pretended not to hear him, and was for cuttin’ away, ‘lend me your quad a minute to go and catch mine upon;’ so, accordingly, I got down, and up he climbed. ‘Let out the stirrups four ’oles,’ said he, quite consequential, shuffling himself into his seat; ‘Vot, you’ve cotched the fox ’ave ye?” said he, lookin’ at the brush danglin’ through the ’ead stall. ‘Yes,’ says I to him, says I, ‘we’ve cotched him.’ Then vot do you think says he to me? Vy, says he to me, says he, ‘Then cotch my ’oss,’ and away the old wagrant went, ’oss, ’ounds, brush, and all, tellin’ everybody he met as how he’d cotched the fox, and leavin’ me to run about the ploughed land after his great hairy-heel’d nag.—My tops baint dry yet and never will, I think,” added Benjamin, putting them closer to the fire, and giving it another poke with his toe.
“What’n ’osses does he keep?” inquired the return post-boy.
“Oh, precious rips, I assure you, and no mistake. Bless your ’eart, our old chap knows no more about an ’oss than an ’oss knows about him, but to hear him talk—Oh, Crikey! doesn’t he give them a good character, especial ven he vants to sell vun. He von’t take no one’s adwice neither. Says I to him t’other mornin’ as he was a feelin’ of my ’oss’s pins, ‘That ’ere ’oss would be a precious sight better if you’d blister and turn him out for the vinter.’ ‘Blister and turn him out for the vinter! you little rascal,’ said he, lookin’ as though he would eat me, ‘I’ll cut off your ’ead and sew on a button, if you talks to me about blisterin’.’ Says I to him, says I, ‘You’re a thorough-bred old hidiot for talking as you do, for there isn’t a grum in the world1 what doesn’t swear by blisters!’ I’d blister a cork leg if I had one,” added Benjamin, “so would any grum. Blisterin’ against the world, says I, for everything except the worms. Then it isn’t his confounded stupidity only that one has to deal with, but he’s such an unconscionable old screw about feeding of his ’osses—always sees every feed put afore them, and if it warn’t for the matter of chopped inions (onions) that I mixes with their corn, I really should make nothing out of my stable, for the old ’un pays all his own bills, and orders his own stuff, and ven that’s the case those base mechanics of tradesmen never stand nothin’ to no one.”
“And what do you chop the onions for, Mr. Benjamin?” inquired Samuel Strong.
“Chop inions for!” exclaimed Ben, with astonishment, “and is it possible that you’ve grown those great fiery viskers on either side of your chuckle head and not be hup to the chopped inion rig? My eyes, but you’ll never be able to keep a gal, I think! Vy, you double-distilled fool—”
“Come, sir,” interrupted Samuel, again doubling his enormous fist, that would almost have made a head for Benjamin, amid a general roar of laughter, “keep a clean tongue in your head, or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”
“Oh, you’re a man of that description, are you!” exclaimed Benjamin, pretending to be in a fright, “you don’t look like a dentist either somehow—poor hignorant hass. Vy the chopped inion rig be just this—you must advance a small brown out of your own pocket to buy an inion, and chop it werry small. Then s’pose your chemist and druggist chap gives his ’oss four feeds a day (vich I s’pose will be three more nor he does), and sees the grain given, which some wicked old warmints will do, you take the sieve, and after shakin’ the corn, and hissin’ at it well, just take half a handful of chopped inion out of your jacket pocket, as you pass up to the ’oss’s ’ead, and scatter it over the who’ats, then give the sieve a shake, and turn the whole into the manger. The governor seeing it there, will leave, quite satisfied that the ’oss has had his dues, and perhaps may get you out of the stable for half an hour or so, but that makes no odds, when you goes back you’ll find it all there, and poulterers like it none the worse for the smell of the inions. That, and pickin’ off postage-stamps, is about the only parquisite I has.”
“Now, Mr. Von-eye,” said he, turning to Bill Brown, the one-eyed helper, “is it time for my ’osses to have their bucket of water and kick in the ribs?”
The time for this luxurious repast not having arrived, Benjamin again composed himself in his corner with his pipe, and the party sat in mute astonishment at his wonderful precocity.
The return post-boy (whose time was precious) at length broke silence, by asking Benjamin if he was living with his first master.
“Deed am I,” replied Ben, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “and had I known as much of sarvice as I does now, I’d have stayed at school all my life—Do what they will at school, they carn’t make you larn, and there’s always plenty of playtime. Crikey, ’ow well I remembers the day our old cock kidnapped me. Me and putty-faced Joe, and Peter Pink-eye Rogers, were laying our heads together how we could sugar old mother Gibb’s milk, that’s she as keeps the h’apple and purple-sugar-stick stall by the skittle-ground at the Royal Artilleryman, on Pentonville Hill; vell, we were dewising how we should manage to get her to give us tick for two pennorth of Gibraltar rock, when Mr. Martin, the ’ead master, and tail master too, I may call him, for he did all the flogging, came smiling in with a fat stranger at his ’eels, in a broad-brimmed caster, and ’essian boots with tassels, werry much of the cut of old Paul Pry, that they used to paint upon the ’busses and pint pots, though I doesn’t see no Paul Prys now-a-days.
“Well, this ’ere chap was old Jorrocks, and h’up and down the school he went, lookin’ first at one bye (boy) and then at another, the master all the while hegging him on, just as the old ’un seemed to take a fancy, swearing they was all the finest byes in the school, just as I’ve since ’eard old J. himself chaunting of his ’osses ven he’s ’ad one for to sell, but still the old file was difficult to suit—some were too long in the body, some in the leg, others too short, another’s ’ead was too big, and one whose nose had been flattened by a brick-bat from a Smithfield drover’s bye, didn’t please him. Well, on he went, h’up one form, down another, across the rest, until he got into the middle of the school, where the byes sit face to face, with their books on their knees, instead of havin’ a desk afore them, and the old cock havin’ got into the last line, began h’examining of them werry closely, fearin’ he was not goin’ for to get suited.
“ ‘Werry rum, Mr. Martin,’ said he, ‘werry rum, I’ve been to the kilt and bare-legged school in ’Atton Garding, the green coat and yellow breeches in ’Ackney, the red coat and blue vestkits at ’Olloway, the sky-blues and jockey-caps at Paddington Green, and found nothin’ at all to my mind; must be gettin’ out of the breed of nice little useful bouys, I fear,’ said he, and just as he said the last words, he came afore me, with his ’ands behind his back, and one ’and was open as if he wanted summut, so I spit in it.
“ ‘Hooi! Mr. Martin,’ roared he, jumpin’ round, ‘here’s a bouy spit in my ’and! the biggest gog wotever was seen!’ showing his mauley to Martin with it all runnin’ off; and Martin seeing who was behind, werry soon fixed upon me—‘You little dirty, disreputable ‘bomination,’ said he, seizing of me by the collar, at least wot should have been a collar, for at the Corderoy’s they only give us those quaker-like upright sort of things, such as old fiery-face there,” looking at Samuel Strong, “has on Says Martin to me, says he, laying hold on me werry tight, ‘vot the deuce and old Davey do you mean by insultin’ a gen’leman that will be Lord Mayor? Sir, I’ll flog you within half a barley-corn of your life!’
“ ‘Beg pardon, sir; beg pardon, sir,’ I cried, ‘thought the gen’leman had a sore ’and, and a little hointment ’d do it good.’
“ ‘Haw! haw! haw!’ roared Jorrocks, taking out a red cotton wipe and rubbing his ’and dry, ‘haw! haw! haw! werry good, Mr. Martin, werry good—promisin’ bouy that, I thinks, promisin’ bouy that, likes them with mischief—likes them with mischief, poopeys (puppeys) and bouys—never good for nothin’ unless they ’ave.—Don’t you mind,’ said he, pokin’ Martin in the ribs with his great thick thumb, ‘don’t you mind Beckford’s story ’bout the pointer and the turkeys?’ Martin didn’t, so J. proceeded to tell it afore all the school. ‘Ye see,’ said he, ‘a gent gave another a pointer poop, and enquiring about it a short time arter, the gent who got it said he feared it wasn’t a goin’ to do him any good, cos as how it hadn’t done him any ’arm. But meetin’ him again a fortnight arter, he changed his tune, and thought well on him, for,’ says he, ‘he’s killed me heighteen turkeys since I saw you—haw! haw! haw!—he! he! he!—ho! ho! ho!’ ”—a guffaw in which the saddle-room party joined.
When the laughter subsided, Ben was unanimously requested to continue his narrative.
“And what did the old gent say about you?” asked Sam, expecting to hear that Ben got a good thrashing for his dirty, disrespectful conduct.
“O, why,” replied Ben, considering—“O, why, arter he had got all quiet again, and his wipe put back into his pocket, he began handlin’ and lookin’ at me, and then, arter a good examination, he says to Martin, quite consequential-like—‘’Ow old’s the rogue?’
“Now Martin know’d no more about me than I know’d about Martin; but knowin’ the h’age that Jorrocks wanted a bye of, why, in course, he said I was just of that age, and knowin’ that I should get a precious good hiding for spittin’ in the old covey’s ’and, if I staid at the Corderoy’s, why I swore that I was uncommon fond of ’osses, and gigs, and ’arness, and such like, and after the old file had felt me well about the neck, for he had an ide that if a bye’s big in the neck in course o’ time he’ll get big all over, he took me away, promising Martin the two quarterages our old gal had run in arrear for my larning—though hang me I never got none—out o’ my wage, and would ye believe it, the old gudgeon kept me goin’ on from quarter to quarter, for I don’t know ’ow many quarters, sayin’ he hadn’t viped off the old score for my schoolin’, just as if I had any business to pay it; at last, one day as I was a rubbin’ down the chestnut ’oss as he sold to the chap in Tooley Street, he comes into the stable, full of pride, and I thought rather muzzy, for he bumped first agin one stall and then agin another, so says I to him, says I, ‘Please, sir, I vants for to go to the Vells this evening.’
“ ‘To the Vells!’ repeated he, staring with astonishment—‘To the Vells!—Wot Vells?’
“ ‘Bagnigge!’ said I, and that’s a place, Mr. Baconface,” observed Ben, turning to Samuel Strong, “that you shouldn’t be hung without seeing—skittles, bowls, stalls all around the garding, like stables for ’osses, where parties take their tea and XX—all painted sky-blue with red pannels—gals in shiny vite gowns and short sleeves, bare down the neck, singing behind the h’organ with h’ostrich feathers in their ’eads—all beautiful—admission tup-pence—a game at skittles for a penna—and every thing elegant and quite genteel—mustn’t go in that queer coat of yours though, or they’d take you for a Bedlamite, and may be send you to the hulks—queer chaps the Londoners.—Once know’d a feller, quite as queer a lookin’ dog as you, barrin’ his nose, which was a bit better, and not so red. Well, he had a rummish cove of a governor, who clapt him into a nut-brown suit, with bright basket buttons, and a glazed castor, with a broad welwet band ‘all round his ’at,’ and as he was a mizzlin’ along Gower Street, where his master had just come to live from over t’other side of the vater, vot should he meet, but one of the new polish (police), who seeing such a h’object, insisted he was mad; and nothin’ would sarve him, but that he was mad; and avay he took him to the station ’ouse, and from thence, afore the beak, at Bow Street, and nothin’ but a sendin’ for the master to swear that they were his clothes, and that he considered them livery, saved the fellow from transportation, for if he’d stolen the clothes he couldn’t have been more galvanized than when the new polish grabbed him.
“Well, but that isn’t what I was a goin’ to tell you about. Blow these boots,” said he, stooping down and turning them again, “they never are goin’ for to dry. Might as well have walked through the Serpentine in them. I was goin’ to tell you of the flare-up the old ’un and I had about the Vells. ‘Well,’ says I to him, says I, ‘I vants for to go the Vells.’
“ ‘Vot Vells?’ said he.
“ ‘Bagnigge,’ says I. ‘Bagnigge be d—d,’ said he,—no, he didn’t say ‘be d—d,’ for the old ’un never swears except he’s h’outrageously h’angry. But, howsomever, he said, I shouldn’t go to the Vells, for as ’ow, Mrs. Muffin, and the seven Miss Muffins, from Primrose Hill, were comin’ to take their scald with him that evening, and he vanted me to carry the h’urn, while Batsey buttered and ’anded round the bread.
“ ‘Well,’ but says I to him, says I, ‘that don’t h’argufy. If I’m a grum, I’m a grum, if I’m a butler, I’m a butler, but it’s out of all conscience and calkilation expectin’ a man to be both grum and butler. Here ’ave I been a cleanin’ your useless screws of hosses, and weshing your hugly chay till I’m fit to faint, in h’order that I might have a night of enjoyment to myself, and then you wants me to carry vater to your nasty old boiler. A man should have double wage, ’stead of none at all, to stand such vork.’
“ ‘’Ow do you mean none at all?’ said he, grinnin’ with anger, ‘dosn’t I pay your old mother a sovereign annually four times a-year?’
“ ‘Vot’s that to me?’ said I, ‘my mother don’t do your work, does she?’
“ ‘Dash my vig!’ said he, gettin’ into a reglar blaze. ‘You little ungrateful ’ound, I’ll drown you in a bucket of barley water,’ and so we got on from bad to worse, until he swore he’d start me, and get another bouy from the Corderoy’s.
“ ‘Quite unanimous,’ said I, ‘quite unanimous, in course you’ll pay up my wages afore I go, and that will save me the trouble of taking of you to Hicks Hall.’ At the werry word, ‘Hicks Hall,’ the old gander turned quite green and began to soften. ‘Now, Binjimin,’ said he, “that’s werry unkind o’ you. If you had the Hen and Chickens comin’ to take their pumpaginous aqua (which he says is French for tea and coffee) with you, and you wanted your boiler carried, you’d think it werry unkind of Batsey if she wouldn’t give you a lift!’ Then he read a long lector about doing as one would be done by, and all that sort of gammon that Martin used to cram us with of a Sunday. Till at last it ended in his givin’ me a half-crown to do what he wanted, on the understandin’ that it was none of my vork, and I says that a chap wot does everything he’s bid, like that suckin’ Sampson there,” eyeing Samuel Strong with the most ineffable contempt, “is only fit to be a tinker’s jack-ass.” Samuel looked as though he would annihilate the boy as soon as he made up his mind where to hit him, and Benjamin, unconscious of all danger, stooped, and gave the eternal tops another turn.
“We never heard nothin’ of your comin’ until three days afore you cast up,” observed Bill Brown, with a broad grin on his countenance at Benjamin’s audacity and Samuel’s anger.
“It wern’t werry likely that you should,” replied Benjamin, looking up, “for as ’ow we hadn’t got our own consent much afore that. Our old cove is a reg’lar word-and-a-blow man. If he does, he does, and if he don’t, why he lets it alone. Give the old ’un his due, he’s none o’ your talkin’ chaps, wot’s always for doin’ somethin’ only they don’t. He never promised me a cow-hidin’ yet, but he paid it with interest. As soon as ever he got the first letter, I know’d there was somethin’ good in the wind; for he gave me half a pot of his best marmeylad, and then a few days after he chucked me a golden sovereign, tellin’ me, go and buy a pair of new tops, or as near new as I could get them for the money.”
“And what did you pay for them?” inquired both post-boys at once, for the price of top-boots is always an interesting subject to a stable-servant.
“Guess!” replied Benjamin, holding them up, adding, “mind, they are nothing like now what they were when I bought them; the Jew told me, though it don’t do to believe above half what those gents tell you, that they belonged to the Markiss of Castlereagh’s own tiger, and that he had parted with them because they didn’t wrinkle in quite as many folds as his Majesty wished. Here was the fault,” continued Benjamin, holding one of the boots upon his hand and pressing the top downwards to make it wrinkle. “You see it makes but eight wrinkles between the top and the ’eel, and the Markiss’s gen’lman swore as how he would never be seen in a pair wot didn’t make nine, so he parted with them, and as I entered ’Olyvell Street from the east, I spied them ’anging on the pegs at Levy Aaron’s, that’s the first Jew vot squints on the left ’and side of the way, for there are about twenty of them in that street with queer eyes.
“ ‘Veskit!’ said he, ‘vashin’ veskit, werry sheep; half nothin’ in fact,’ just as these barkers always chaff.
“ ‘No,’ said I, passing on—‘You don’t s’pose I wears cast-offs!’
“ ‘Clow for shell,’ then said he,—‘Bes’h price, bes’h price.’
“ ‘Nor to shell neither,’ said I, mimickin’ of him. ‘I’ll swap my shoes for a pair of tops if you like.’
“ ‘Vot vill you give in?’ axed Levy Aaron.
“ ‘Nothin’,’ said I, determined to begin low enough.
“ ‘Valk in then,” said he, quite purlite, ‘’onour of your custom’s quite enough,’ so in I went. Such a shop! full o’ veskits covered with gold and flowers, and lace and coats, without end, with the shop sides, each as high as a hay-stack, full o’ nothin’ but trousers and livery breeches.
“ ‘Sit down, shir, said he, ’anding me a chair without a back, while his missis took the long stick from behind the door with a hook, and fished down several pairs of tops. They had all sorts and sizes, and all colours too. Mahogany, vite, rose-colour, painted vons; but I kept my eye on the low pair I had seen outside, till at last Mrs Levy Aaron handed them through the winder. I pulls one on.
“ ‘Uncommon fit,’ said Levy Aaron, slappin’ the sole to feel if all my foot was in; ‘much better leg than the Markiss o’ Castlereagh’s tiger; you’ll live with a Duke before you die.’
“ ‘Let’s have on t’other,” said I
“ ‘Von’s as good as both,’ said he. ‘Oh!’ says I, twiggin’ vot he was after,—‘If you thinks I’m a man to bolt with your boots, you’r mistaken; so I kicked off the one I had on, and bid him ’and me my shoes.’ Well, then he began to bargain—‘Thirty shillings and the shoes’ I was werry angry and wouldn’t treat. ‘Five-and-twenty shillings without the shoes then.’ Still I wouldn’t touch. ‘Give me my castor,’ said I, buttonin’ up my pocket with a slap, and lookin’ werry wicious. ‘You’r a nasty suspicious old warmint.’ Then the Jew began to soften. ‘’Onour bright, he meant no offence.’ ‘One shovereign then he vod take.’ ‘Give me my castor,’ said I
“ ‘Good mornin’, Mrs. Jewaster,’ which means female Jew ‘Seventeen and sixpence!’ ‘Go to the devil,’ said I. ‘Come then, fifteen shillin’ and a paper bag to put them in.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘I’ll give you ten.’ ‘Done,’ said he, and there they are. A nice polish they had when I got them, but the ploughed land has taken the shine off. Howsomever, I s’pose they’ll touch up again?”
“Not they,” replied Bill Brown, who had been examining one of them very minutely, “they are made of nothing but brown paper!”
“Brown paper be ’anged!” exclaimed Benjamin. “Your ’ead’s more like made of brown paper.”
“Look there then!” rejoined Bill Brown, running his thumb through the instep, and displaying the brown paper through the liquid varnish with which it had been plentifully smeared.
“Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw, haw, haw,” pealed the whole of the saddle-room party, in the midst of which Ben bolted with his brown-paper boots.
