Page:The world's show, 1851, or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to "enjoy themselves", and to see the Great Exhibition (IA worldsshow1851or00mayh).pdf/39

 *vise him to take great care of it—that was the last their stock of soap would allow him to have—it might be for months—and she would advise him to do, as he had read to her from the newspaper the other day, as the nasty, filthy Russians did—and grease it all over well, so that he might wear it until it dropped off his body, for she could tell him he wouldn't have another until he went to fetch that Harker from the Great Exhibition. She did not mind, she told him, so much about the loss of her tea—severe trial as that was to her, and requiring all her Christian fortitude to bear—the want of beer was little or no privation to her—it was the servants—the poor, hardworking servants that she felt for. The dearth of fresh meat did not affect her—it was her dear Elcy's complexion that she looked at; she could have gone barefoot all her life herself, but the idea of her children going about the earth shoeless, realized a wretchedness that she never could have imagined when she left her father's home.

Still this was nothing—wretchedness was nothing—starvation was nothing—shoelessness was nothing, compared with the want of soap—she could bear anything but dirt. It was the terror of that had kept her from going to London, and now she saw that, in spite of all her efforts, Mr. Sandboys' obstinacy about his trumpery wickedness would bring upon her those very horrors which she had made so many sacrifices to avoid. She did not care about any of his Great Exhibitions, only all she knew was, that she would rather go through any wickedness than live in the dirt that she could see he was forcing her into. Stay in Hassness she would not; and she had made up her mind, as Mr. Sandboys would not leave it, that she would throw herself on Messrs. Brag and Steal, and trust to them—for they were her father's lawyers—to make him provide her with a separate and comfortable maintenance. Dearly as she once had loved him, she loved cleanliness more, and it remained for him to say whether they were to continue any longer together in the same wholesome state in which they had lived for thirty long years. And having given vent to her feelings, she seized the bed candlestick and marched indignantly into Elcy's room, where she declared her resolution to pass the night.

Sandboys, in the enthusiasm of his excited feelings and the sad prospect of his threatened widowerhood, would have jumped up and followed her; but again remembering the paucity of his attire, sank back into his chair. In a few minutes it struck him that he had been sitting with his feet in the pail until the water had beceme as cold as that of the brook into which he had tumbled, and he began to think that, by remaining in his present position, he was perhaps adding another cold to the one he had already caught, in his fatal attempt at theoretical and practical pig-driving.

For the first time since his wedding-day, Cursty Sandboys was left to monopolize the amplitude of the matrimonial feather-bed, and no sooner had he rested his nightcap on his pillow, than there began to pass before his mind a dismal diorama of all the incidents of the day. As he looked upon the picture of the destitution, and desolation, and devastation, and denudation of his home, he half-relented of his stern