Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/606

 chaffin' of me. Howsoever, the day come, I went, and this is how 'twas.

Imagine the astonishment of me and Mrs. Hel, when, one morning, as we was at breakfast, up comes the postman to the winder, and delivers in a letter bearin' a forren stamp—head of a young 'oman, hupside down, feature good, but perky, hinscription, "Correyos Reales."

"Why, what d'ye make o' this?" I asks.

"Queen o' Spain's, I fancy," says the postman, with the indifference of his specious. "You're ' senior' Lufkin, I suppose?" he adds, grinning.

"Well, there a'nt no junior, yet" says I, with a wink at my missis, which colored, and poured out the tea.

Sure enough, the letter was addressed to "Señor Lufkin, Goodburn-close, Hogsmead, Lincoln, Hangletare." Hafter spekilatin' nigh half-an-hour who it could possibly be from, we opened it. Who should it be, but Tom, my missis's cousin (you remember Tom?) which took us to see the Mrs. Davingpodge, and which we'd never set heyes on, since that curous hinvestigation.

Now, Tom is that sort o' movable chap, that, if you heerd of him yesterday at Broadstairs, you might reasonably expect a note from him to-morrow, from the himmediate wicinity of ancient Babylon. If he telegraphted from Chaney, that he was off to Japan, having took final leaf of England, my missis, without any hobservation, would get our spare bed ready for him, to-morrow. We wasn't surprised, therefore, to find that Tom had wisited Sarah Gosser.

Nor it wasn't so very strange, his writin' to me. Hever since that evening at the Mrs. Davingpodge's, we had been, though we never met, the best o' friends. He came home to supper that night with us, and after we'd spoke of the hevents of the hevening, and I'd gone so far as to allow that the sudden huntying of a rope, under very peculiar and critical circumstances, might be a useful haccomplishment to a certain class o' men, my wife went up to bed, and we had a deal o' friendly talk, Tom and me had, hover our pipes and toddy. We agreed that we had been very sad fellows, -and sowed a mighty power o' wild oats, to be sure! (My wust enemies wouldn't accuse me of much in that line; but my hobject, you see, were to set poor Tom at his hease, and seem wery penitent for what I hadn't done.) But that we felt it were now high tune to steady down, and putt our shoulders to the wheel.

Tom was franker than ever I know'd him. He told me all his adventures, the fortins he'd been on the brink o' making, and the ill-luck that spiled so many of his hexlent designs, the theayter he'd built, with self-hacting scenery, lights, and box-keeping, which went to smash; the "Hevery 'Alf-hour Hexpress" which cum to grief; the gun which bust; and the Polish conspiracy, which was hanged in hinfancy.

He had now got in hand a wonderful Drayma, which, being took from the French, and put into Irish, with a railway smash, and a plunge down the Falls of Niagara, would make the fortins of half the managers in Europe, besides helevating the drama almost out o' sight.

In return, I told him the luck I had had at Hogsmead, 'specially with beasts, and of the good bit o' money I had already put by. This pleased Tom very much. We got more and more agreeable together. We shook hands a good many times, in the course o' the evening, and, I don't remember much else, 'cept that, next morning, I found that one o' my ten pun'-notes had turned into a I. O. U., bearin' the signature, shaky, but legible, "Thomas Ketcham Tirritup."

(I never mentioned that little hepisode to Mrs. Hel, and if ever this comes to be published, in the same singular manner as the former, I only begs that the printer'll leave out the last parrowgraft.)

Now, we comes back to Tom's letter.

'Twas wrote in the best o' sperrets, Tom statin' that he was already good 'alf-way up the 'ill o' fortune, which he'd been so long a-bungling at the foot of. Seeing how lucky I had been in the bullock line, he had gone in for a branch of the same, and was already half-proprietor of one o' the wery finest establishments in Sarah Gosser. Such were the popilarity of the stock—'specially small but hactive bulls, supplied from the grazing farms of Ramirez Vermijo and Tirritup—that it was sometimes hard to make room for all that came to bid. They did a little in horses, too, but weren't so lucky as in t'other. It seems bulls didn't agree with 'em. At all events, the mortality in the stable was wery serious, and Tom hinted that a consignment of animals from England 'specially of cab-'osses as had served their four or five year, and had anything the matter—exceptin' glarnders—would be wery acceptable. Hoddly enough (added Tom) they was in a position to give five shillings more for a blind 'oss, than one as saw.

"Well, Jem, I never!" put in my wife. "That is a queer fancy."

"The work," Tom adds, "is ' hexceptional.'"

"What's that, Hel?"

"Mill work," says I (I always likes to make ready answer)—"grinding bones, or something o' that kind. It's depressing to a thinkin' 'oss to be walking round and round, and seeing what his own bones is gradually workin' to."

"Do 'osses think?" asks my wife.

"What d'ye suppose their brains is doing all day long, in the stable?" I asks. Then, before she'd time to ask me what I thought they was doing, I reads on.

"'With your experience, an' a little capital, I could dewelope the business o' Ramirez Vermijo and Tirritup to a hextent hundreamed of in the wildest wisions o' avarice. Hafter that, I'll sit down a contented man.'"

"Poor Tom!" says Mrs. Hel, wisibly effected; "he's not a bad fellow, you see."

"'You remember our conwersation,'" I continued, reading, "after the sworry, shay Davingpodge Brothers, and how we agreed that, having now, both on us, had our swing and enj'yed our little games'"