ghost in pursuit of him, and began to plunge again, and never ceased plunging until he plunged into the cellar; and there finding an empty sack, he jumped in, pulled it up about him like a pillow-case about a pillow, ducked over-head, and prayed devoutly that his pursuer might prove to be some Johnny Raw of a ghost that would be hoaxed into taking him for a sack of mealy potatoes: whilst the innocent cause of his terror, poor “Fan—Fan,” trembling and palpitating, like a hunted hare, finally recovered her own ‘form’ in bed.
Poor throbbing “Fan—Fan!” we must pity thee, at the same time that we cannot help laughing a little. If “Fan—Fan” had frightened other people, was that any reason why a brute of a fellow should frighten her so confoundedly with his horrid—“Who the devil are you?” No, surely: and a just judgment it was upon this brute—that, as he turned round with his face to the ladder, he saw (ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ! ὀτοτοτοτο͂ι πόποι!) another fellow, standing just where he had stood on the ladder, who forthwith popped his own question to him—“Who the devil are you?” To which, however, he replied, not by plunging like a mule, or running like a fawn, but simply by retorting—“Why, if you come to that, who the devil are you?”.
Well, here are questions as plenty as blackberries: now let us have some answers.
“I am,” said the man on the ladder, “Mr. Ferdinand Lawler.”
“Ah! Mr. Ferdinand, how do you do?” said the man within: “for my part, I am Slippery Dick.”
“So! and how came you here, Mr. Dick?”
“Why, the truth is, sir, Nelly had just hoaxed us all with a cock-and-a-bull story of two thieves she pretended to have caught. A mere swindling trick, Mr. Ferdinand! I protest I respect the woman highly; for she swindled us all. I never thought she had so much talent. However, it’s not pleasant to be bilked of one’s sport; and so I wasn’t sorry that, as I came away from Nelly’s, I started some game for myself. Up this very ladder I saw a young boy in white trowsers mounting as fast as ever his legs could carry him; and, says I to myself—‘That’s a thief: I’ll go after him.”
“So! well now, that’s just my case with regard to you, Dick, for I saw you mounting the ladder, and said I to myself—‘that’s a thief; I’ll go after him.’ And, by the way, Dick, I think I was not so far out in my notion as you were in yours; for your thief in white trowsers was Miss Fanny Blumauer in white petticoats.”
Dick was a wit, and he took all such things in good part: wits, he knew, must give and take; so he contented himself with re-
