Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/34

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4
PAUL CLIFFORD.

"Companion to the Halter!" but you'll get a bible, I thinks, at Master Talkins,—the cobbler—as preaches.' So I goes to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Bible, 'cause vy, I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a-getting it at the butcher's hover the vay—cause vy?—the butcher'll be damned!' So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Bible; but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like 'un, and mayhap the poor cretur mayn't see the difference.' So I takes the plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be surely!—And how's poor Judy?"

"Fearsome! she'll not be over the night; I'm a-thinking."

"Vell, I'll track up the dancers!"

So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney, afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber, which the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray. The walls were white-washed, and at sundry