shatter it into a hundred pieces on the hearth. He cracked one of my finest Knellers when he tapped upon the wall to assure himself it was not hollow. He contrived to tread upon my poodle and render it permanently lame as he examined the floor and wainscot. He cut the Turkey carpet in a dozen places by the way he used his heels; and when he paused to take a little breath, he calculated things so excellently well that by suddenly dropping fourteen stones of beer and democratic blackguardism on a frail settee, he smashed it in the middle, and in the fall he had in consequence had the good luck to put his elbow through the glass door of a cabinet. And he did all this with such a pleasant air that I almost wept for rage.
"Mr. Flickers," says I, mildly, "my compliments to you. In five minutes you have managed to smash such an astonishing quantity of furniture that in future, with your kind permission, I shall amend the adage, and instead of speaking of a bull in a china-shop, shall phrase it a Corporal in a lady's chamber."
"Dooty, my lady," says the Corporal, simply, but trying to crush a mirror into fragments by jamming his back against it, "dooty don't wait fer duchesses. Dooty must be done."
To show how completely he was the slave of it, he resumed his happy occupation at the word: stepped lightly to my clothes closet, and wreaked such a horrid havoc on my dresses that the tears appeared in poor Mrs. Polly Emblem's eyes.
