Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/57

Rh for makin' you take to your vittals. My mother's brother, bein' a sailor, an' wonderful for 'is stomach, which when 'e 'ad done a meal, the table looked as if a low-cuss 'ad gone over it."

"A what?" asked Fitzgerald, buttoning his gloves.

"A low-cuss," replied the landlady, in surprise at his ignorance, "as I've read in 'Oly Writ as 'ow John the Baptist was partial to 'em, not that I think they'd be very fillin', tho', to be sure, 'e 'ad a sweet tooth, and ate 'oney with 'em."

"Oh! you mean locusts," said Brian, now enlightened.

"An' what else?" asked Mrs. Sampson, indignantly; "which, tho' not bein' a scholard, I speaks English, I 'opes, my mother's second cousin 'avin 'ad first prize at a 'spellin' bee, tho' 'e died early through brain fever, 'avin crowded 'is 'ead over much with the dictionary."

"Dear me!" shouted Brian mechanically. "How unfortunate." He was not listening to Mrs. Sampson's remarks, but was thinking of an arrangement which Madge had made, and which he had forgotten till now.

"Mrs. Sampson," he said, turning round at the door, "I am going to bring Mr. Frettlby and his daughter to have a cup of afternoon tea here; so you might have some ready."

"You 'ave only to ask and to 'ave," answered Mrs. Sampson, hospitably, with a gratified crackle of all her joints. "I'll make tea, sir, an' also some of my own pertickler cakes, bein' a special kind I 'ave, which my mother showed me 'ow to make, 'avin' been taught by a lady as she nussed thro' the scarlet fever, tho' bein' of a weak constitution she died soon arter, bein' in the 'abit of contractin' any disease she might chance on."

As Brian did not care about a connection between cooking and scarlet fever, he hurried away, lest Mrs. Sampson should bring out more horrors, for which she had a Poe-like appreciation. Indeed, at one period of her life, the little woman having been a nurse, she had frightened one of her patients into convulsions by narrating to her the history of all the corpses she had laid out. This ghoul-like tendency having been discovered, she never obtained any more patients to nurse, as they objected when in a weak state to hear such grotesque horrors.