I noticed that Sniff was agin a-rubbing his stomach with a soothing hand, and that he had drored up one leg. But agin I didn’t take particular notice, looking on myself as called upon to stimulate public feeling. It being a lark besides.
“Putting everything together,” said Our Missis, “French Refreshmenting comes to this, and oh, it comes to a nice total! First: eatable things to eat, and drinkable things to drink.”
A groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.
“Second: convenience, and even elegance.”
Another groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.
“Third: moderate charges.”
This time a groan from me, kep’ up by the young ladies.
“Fourth:- and here,” says Our Missis, “I claim your angriest sympathy,—attention, common civility, nay, even politeness!”
Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together.
“And I cannot in conclusion,” says Our Missis, with her spitefullest sneer, “give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn’t bear our constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a single month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and put another system in our places, as soon as look at us; perhaps sooner, for I do not believe they have the good taste to care to look at us twice.”
The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head. It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep’ her eye upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard in the sawdust department.
You come into the Down Refreshment Room, at the Junction, making believe you don’t know me, and I’ll pint you out with my right thumb over my shoulder which is Our Missis, and which is Miss Whiff, and which is Miss Piff, and which is Mrs. Sniff. But you won’t get a chance to see Sniff, because he disappeared that night. Whether he perished, tore to pieces, I cannot say; but his corkscrew alone remains, to bear witness to the servility of his disposition.
