Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/753

Rh for being seen. When I went into society, I paid heavy for being seen. I prefer the former, even if I wasn't forced upon it. Give me out through the trumpet, in the hold way to-morrow."

After that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled all over. But the organ was kep' from him, and no allusions was ever made, when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser every day; his views of society and the public was luminous, bewilderiir, awful: and his 'ed got bigger and bigger as his wisdom expanded it.

He took well, and pulled 'em in most excellent for nine weeks. At the expiration of that period, when his 'ed was a sight, he expressed one evenin', the last company havin' been turned out, and the door shut, a wish to have a little music.

"Mr. Chops," I said (I never dropped the "Mr." with him; the world might do it, but not me)—"Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are in a state of mind and body to sit upon the organ?"

His answer was this: "Toby, when next met with on the tramp, I forgive her and the Indian. And I am."

It was with fear and trembling that I began to turn the handle ; but he sat like a lamb. It will be my belief to my dying day, that I see his 'ed expand as he sat; you may therefore judge how great his thoughts was. He sat out all the changes, and then he come off.

"Toby," he says with a quiet smile, "the little man will now walk three times round the cairawan, and retire behind the curtain."

When we called him in the morning, we found him gone into a much better society than mine or Pall Mali's. I giv' Mr. Chops as comfortable a funeral as lay in my power, followed myself as chief, and had the George the Fourth canvas carried first, in the form of a banner. But the house was so dismal afterward that I giv' it up, and took to the wan again.