“Chicken,” returned Mr. Toots, “your expressions are coarse, and your meaning is obscure.”
“Why, then, I tell you what, Master,” said the Chicken. “This is where it is. It’s mean.”
“What is mean, Chicken?” asked Mr. Toots.
“It is,” said the Chicken, with a frightful corrugation of his broken nose. “There! Now, Master! Wot! When you could go and blow on this here match to the stiff ’un;” by which depreciatory appellation it has been since supposed that the Game One intended to signify Mr. Dombey; “and when you could knock the winner and all the kit of ’em dead out o’ wind and time, are you going to give in? To give in?” said the Chicken, with contemptuous emphasis. “Wy, it’s mean!”
“Chicken,” said Mr. Toots, severely, “you’re a perfect Vulture! Your sentiments are atrocious.”
“My sentiments is Game and Fancy, Master,” returned the Chicken. “That’s wot my sentiments is. I can’t abear a meanness. I’m afore the public, I’m to be heerd on at the bar of the Little Helephant, and no Gov’ner o’ mine mustn’t go and do what’s mean. Wy, it’s mean,” said the Chicken, with increased expression. “That’s where it is. It’s mean.”
“Chicken,” said Mr. Toots, “you disgust me.”
“Master,” returned the Chicken, putting on his hat, “there’s a pair on us, then. Come! Here’s a offer! You’ve spoke to me more than once’t or twice’t about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi’typunnote tomorrow, and let me go.”
“Chicken,” returned Mr. Toots, “after the odious sentiments you have expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.”
“Done then,” said the Chicken. “It’s a bargain. This here conduct of yourn won’t suit my book, Master. Wy, it’s mean,” said the Chicken; who seemed equally unable to get beyond that point, and to stop short of it. “That’s where it is; it’s mean!”
So Mr. Toots and the Chicken agreed to part on this incompatibility of moral perception; and Mr. Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily of Florence, who had thought of him as her friend upon the last night of her maiden life, and who had sent him her dear love.
LVII
Another Wedding
Mr. Sownds the beadle, and Mrs. Miff the pew-opener, are early at their posts in the fine church where Mr. Dombey was married. A yellow-faced old gentleman from India, is going to take unto himself a young wife this morning, and six carriages full of company are expected, and Mrs. Miff has been informed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pave the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them. The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.
Mrs. Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she generally is; and she has always strong opinions on that subject, for it is associated with free sittings. Mrs. Miff is not a student of political economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; “Baptists or Wesleyans, or some o’ them,” she says), but she can never understand what business your common folks have to be married. “Drat ’em,” says Mrs. Miff “you read the same things over ’em and instead of sovereigns get sixpences!”
Mr. Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs. Miff—but then he is not a pew-opener. “It must be done, Ma’am,” he says. “We must marry ’em. We must have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must have our standing armies. We must marry ’em, Ma’am,” says Mr. Sownds, “and keep the country going.”
Mr. Sownds is sitting on the steps and Mrs. Miff is dusting in the church, when a young couple, plainly dressed, come in. The mortified bonnet of Mrs. Miff is sharply turned towards them, for she espies in this early visit indications of a runaway match. But they don’t want to be married—“Only,” says the gentleman, “to walk round the church.” And as he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs. Miff, her vinegary face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip and crackle.
Mrs. Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions—for the yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees—but keeps her glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking round the church. “Ahem,” coughs Mrs. Miff whose cough is drier than the hay in any hassock in her charge, “you’ll come to us one of these mornings, my dears, unless I’m much mistaken!”
They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the memory of someone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs. Miff, but Mrs. Miff can see with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head is bent down over her. “Well, well,” says Mrs. Miff, “you might do worse. For you’re a tidy pair!”
There is nothing personal in Mrs. Miff’s remark. She merely speaks of stock-in-trade. She is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins. She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady—such a pew of a woman—that you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr. Sownds, now, who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different temperament. He says, as they stand upon the steps watching the young couple away, that she has a pretty figure, hasn’t she, and as well as he could see (for she held her head down coming out), an uncommon pretty face. “Altogether, Mrs. Miff,” says Mr. Sownds with a relish, “she is what you may call a rosebud.”
Mrs. Miff assents with a spare nod of her mortified bonnet; but approves of this so little, that she inwardly resolves she wouldn’t be the wife of Mr. Sownds for any money he could give her, Beadle as he is.
And what
