Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/157

 "Come down!" cried cook, who kept outside the door.

"What's the matter?" demanded Judkins on opening the window. "Is the house on fire?"

"No! but the chimney's smoking awful! Come down."

Judkins left the window, and descended the stairs; but the moment he opened the door which led immediately into the kitchen, he was met by a dense mass of smoke which almost caused him to fall backwards. His presence of mind only saved him. Suffocated as he felt—oppressed as he was—he rushed through the kitchen with all the energy at his command, and on reaching the garden, began to cough with unprecedented power and zeal.

"What—Ho, o-ho, o-ho!" he cried, "What devils—ho, o—trick is this?"

"Come and put a stop to it!" said cook, with great severity. "Don't stand rolling about and barking there like a born fool!"

Judkins would have said that she was a nice woman, but couldn't. He kept on coughing like a frightfully-asthmatic individual, and continued to cough as if he had been thus afflicted, despite the hot remonstrances of cook, who did really indulge on this occasion in many unladylike expressions of disgust.

In the meantime the density of the smoke so much increased that it drove cook fiercely from the door; and when Judkins with coughing felt utterly exhausted, he managed to turn a tub upside down, with the view of taking a seat, but in his agony he came down upon it such a lump that he broke in the bottom, and there he stuck.

Cook was now ferocious. Her rage knew no bounds. She shook her fists fiercely, and threatened to claw the eyes out of the precious head of Judkins, who had not the slightest power to extricate himself, and whose spirit of independence was too noble, too pure, to allow him to solicit her assistance.

"What do you mean?" she exclaimed, when the scum of her rage had boiled over. "What is it you mean? This is not a trick of yours—Oh! no: it isn't your trick!"

My trick!" said Judkins, as well as he could. "Woman! you're a lunatic. I've told you so before."

"Don't provoke me!" she exclaimed, as her passion increased; "you'd better not provoke me!"

And Judkins too thought that this would not be advisable, seeing that she had all the power then in her own hands; and being thus fixed, he felt that, if she were to attack him, however fiercely, he couldn't help it; he couldn't defend himself; he couldn't get away.

"Call me a lunatic again, at your peril!" she continued, coming conveniently near to the tub. "Dare to call me a lunatic again, and I'll make you remember it the longest day you have to live. Now call me a lunatic again, if you dare!"

Judkins did not dare to do anything of the sort. He had to use his own discretion, and that discretion prompted silence; but just as he had recovered sufficient strength to make an effort to relieve himself, Mary—who, finding that she could not enter the kitchen, had opened the front door and come round the cottage—appeared, when Judkins, who was