Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/748

3l6 in short, in which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe he would have burst—but we kep' the organ from him—Mr. Chops come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all. He then sent for a young man he knowed, as had a very genteel appearance and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father having been imminent in the livery-stable line but unfortunate in a commercial crisis through paintin' a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin' him with a pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who said his name was Normandy, which it wasn't:—

"Normandy, I'm a going into society. Will you go with me?"

Says Normandy: "Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the 'ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?"

"Correct," says Mr. Chops. "And you shall have a princely allowance too."

The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair to shake hands with him, and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears:—

They went into society, in a chay and four grays with silk jackets. They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away.

In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlemy Fair in the aiUumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk-white cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Tall Mall, one evenin' appinted. The gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and Mr. Chops's eyes was more fixed in that'ed of his than I thought good for him. There was three of 'em (in company, I mean), and I knowed the third well. When last met, he had on a white Roman shirt, and a bishop's-mitre covered with leopard-skin, and played the clarionet all wrong, in a band at a wild beast show.

This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said: "Gentlemen, this is an old friend of former days;" and Normandy looked at me through a eyeglass, and