Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/154

 "I means it," said Pokey.

"But, mark my words, my boy, it aint your six-and-twenty pun ten that'll save this mighty country from a rattling revolution!"

Having in a strictly confidential tone given emphatic utterance to this singular sentiment, Obadiah gaily left his monied friend, and proceeded to congratulate himself on the extraordinary eloquence he had displayed.

Meanwhile Aunt Eleanor's mind was distressed. To her the note addressed to Rosalie had been the source of much pain: not because she imagined for one moment that the declaration of Sylvester was false!—she felt on the contrary convinced that it was true—but because she was deeply apprehensive that the note had some mysterious connexion with her brother. She knew not why such an apprehension should be inspired: with the exception of the fact of the seal having been his, there was not the slightest link of connexion between them; still the previously conceived possibility of her dear brother's spirit having been perturbed, had created this feeling of apprehension of which her mind could not be divested.

This, however, was not allowed to alter her plans having reference to her journey to London on the morrow. Upon this she had decided: all her arrangements had been made, and when the reverend gentleman—who spent the evening with them, and endeavoured to cheer them by a facetious description of that which he held to be the salubrious qualities of London smoke—had taken his leave, she and Sylvester calmly retired to rest.

During that night no voices were heard. The cottage itself seemed fast asleep, and the turnip-tops nodded and nodded until they developed the strong diagnosis of dreaming: the shrubbery was hushed, and the carrots were still, and while the caterpillars ceased to work their interesting eyelet-holes, not only in the cabbage sprouts, but in the silent leaves of the savoys; the stony-hearted urns, which stood like sentinels at the gate, issued no sort of sound, which was very remarkable—very!—and as these things don't occur every night in the week they ought to be nicely described.

This general tranquillity throughout the night was appreciated, and when cook in the morning came down and saw everything around her precisely as she had left it, she began to congratulate herself on the prospect of a total cessation of that state of things by which she and the rest had been so long annoyed.

On proceeding, however, to light the kitchen fire, she found that the chimney wouldn't draw. This at first she ascribed to a change of the wind. The wood burned well, and there was plenty of it; but the smoke curled into the kitchen in volumes! She opened the door that the draught might be stronger, but the smoke became every moment more dense. She looked at the vane: the wind was south-west: the place had never smoked before when the wind was south-west!—nor did she believe that the chimney was foul.

"Hallo!" shouted Judkins, as the waves of smoke rolled into his chamber, "What are you at? Do you want to choke a fellow? What are you up to? Cook!"