Page:Paul Clifford Vol 2.djvu/109

Rh "You sees, Captain," said he, putting himself in a martial position, and looking Clifford full in the face, "that I'm not addicted to much blarney. Little cry and much wool is my motto. At ten o'clock, saw the enemy—in the shape of a Doctor of Divinity. 'Blow me,' says I, to Old Bags, 'but I'll do his reverence!'—'Blow me,' says Old Bags, 'but you shan't—you'll have us scragged if you touches the church.'—'My grandmother!' says I. 'Bags tells the pals—all in a fuss about it—what care I?—I puts on a decent dress, and goes to the Doctor as a decayed soldier, wot supplies the shops in the Turning line. His reverence—a fat jolly dog as ever you see—was at dinner over a fine roast-pig. So I tells him I have some bargains at home for him. Splice me, if the Doctor did not think he had got a prize! so he puts on his boots and he comes with me to my house. But when I gets him into a lane, out come my pops. 'Give up, Doctor,' says I; 'others must share the goods of the Church now.' You has no idea what a row he made: but I did the thing, and there's an end on't."