Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/751

Rh some creetur run between my legs into the passage. There was Mr. Chops!

"Magsman," he says, " take me on the hold terms, and you've got me; if it's done, say done!"

I was all of a maze, but I said, "Done, sir."

"Done to your done, and double done I" says he.

"Have you got a bit of supper in the house?"

Bearin' in mind them sparklin' warieties of foreign drains as we'd guzzled away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold sassages and gin-and-water; but he took 'em both and took 'em free; havin' a chair for his table, and sittin' down at it on a stool, like hold times. I all of a maze all the while.

It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to the best of my calculations two pounds and a quarter), that the wisdom as was in that liitle man began to come out of him like perspiration.

"Magsman," he Gays, "look upon me I You see afore you one as has both gone in society and come out."

"Oh, you are out of it, Mr. Chops? How did you get out, sir?"

"!" says he. You never saw the like of the wisdom as his 'ed expressed, when he made use of them two words.

"My friend Magsman, I'll impart a discovery to you I've made. It's wallable; it's cost twelve thousand five hundred pound; it may do you good in life.—The secret of this matter is, that it ain't so much that a person goes into society, as that society goes into a person."

Not exactly keeping; up with his meain'n' I shook my head, put on a deep look, and said, "You're right there, Mr. Chops."

"Magsman," he says, twitchin' mo by the leg, "society has gone into me, to the tune of every penny of my property."

I felt that I went pale, and, though nat'rally a bold speaker, I couldn't hardly say, "Where's Normandy?"

"Bolted. With the plate," says Mr. Chops.

"And t'other one?"—meaning him as formerly wore the bishop's mitre.

"Bolted with the jewels," says Mr. Chops.

I sat down and looked at him, and he stood up and looked at me.