Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/245

Rh he confesses to being on his way to Wilton Crescent. What do you think of that, Sir?"

The gentleman to whom Mr. Wylde addressed himself appeared to be unable or unwilling to commit himself to a reply, not having seen much connexion or probability in Mr. Wylde's far-from-lucid resumeé; and his suspicions of that individual's sanity were strengthened, by the explanation which Percie gave to him and the other bystanders, in the abbreviated style of Mr. Alfred Jingle: "Poor man—touched here—very sad—sees a likeness—thinks I 'm his son—distressing case—very!" "I 'll tell you what, Percie!" cried the Old Boy; "I 'll make you suffer for this! Disown me, and call me a lunatic! by Jove, Sir, I 'll cut you off with less than a shilling! Come with me directly, Sir; or never expect me to own you again."

"This," said a small boy, in the didactic manner of Mr. Robson. in the pathetic ballad of "Villikins and his Dinah," "this is vot that brute of a parient hobserved to the hoffspring of his haffections."

"Really, Sir," said Mr. Percival Wylde, "I have endured your eccentricities quite long enough, and it is now time to put a stop to them. You may, perhaps, be a very fine fellow down in your own part of the country, and accustomed to bully labourers and swear at tramps; but you 'll find, Sir, that this conduct won't do in London, where no man is suffered to publicly insult or annoy another with impunity. If every eccentric old gentleman was to take it into his head to claim any one he fancied as his own son, and was permitted to indulge in such absurd paternal cravings, young men, like myself, would not be able to walk the streets in safety, so long