Works of Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens [5636]
However, he gradually ceased to choke and crow, saving at intervals, and Miss Jenny got him into an easy-chair: where, with his eyes red and watery, with his features swollen, and with some half-dozen livid bars across his face, he presented a most rueful sight.
'What ever possessed you to take salt and snuff, young man?' inquired Miss Jenny.
'I didn't take it,' the dismal youth replied. 'It was crammed into my mouth.'
'Who crammed it?' asked Miss Jenny.
'He did,' answered Fledgeby. 'The assassin. Lammle. He rubbed it into my mouth and up my nose and down my throat--Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah--h--h--h! Ugh!--to prevent my crying out, and then cruelly assaulted me.'
'With this?' asked Miss Jenny, showing the pieces of cane.
'That's the weapon,' said Fledgeby, eyeing it with the air of an acquaintance. 'He broke it over me. Oh I smart so! How did you come by it?'
'When he ran down stairs and joined the lady he had left in the hall with his hat'--Miss Jenny began.
'Oh!' groaned Mr Fledgeby, writhing, 'she was holding his hat, was she? I might have known she was in it.'
'When he came down stairs and joined the lady who wouldn't let me come up, he gave me the pieces for you, and I was to say, "With Mr Alfred Lammle's compliments on his leaving England."' Miss Jenny said it with such spiteful satisfaction, and such a hitch of her chin and eyes as might have added to Mr Fledgeby's miseries, if he could have noticed either, in his bodily pain with his hand to his head.
'Shall I go for the police?' inquired Miss Jenny, with a nimble start towards the door.
'Stop! No, don't!' cried Fledgeby. 'Don't, please. We had better keep it quiet. Will you be so good as shut the door? Oh I do smart so!'
In testimony of the extent to which he smarted, Mr Fledgeby came wallowing out of the easy-chair, and took another roll on the carpet.
Now the door's shut,' said Mr Fledgeby, sitting up in anguish, with his Turkish cap half on and half off, and the bars on his face getting bluer, 'do me the kindness to look at my back and shoulders. They must be in an awful state, for I hadn't got my dressing-gown on, when the brute came rushing in. Cut my shirt away from the collar; there's a pair of scissors on that table. Oh!' groaned Mr Fledgeby, with his hand to his head again. 'How I do smart, to be sure!'
'There?' inquired Miss Jenny, alluding to the back and shoulders.
'Oh Lord, yes!' moaned Fledgeby, rocking himself. 'And all over! Everywhere!'
The busy little dressmaker quickly snipped the shirt away, and laid bare the results of as furious and sound a thrashing as even Mr Fledgeby merited. 'You may well smart, young man!' exclaimed Miss Jenny. And stealthily rubbed her little hands behind him, and poked a few exultant pokes with her two forefingers over the crown of his head.
'What do you think of vinegar and brown paper?' inquired the suffering Fledgeby, still rocking and moaning. 'Does it look as if vinegar and brown paper was the sort of application?'
'Yes,' said Miss Jenny, with a silent chuckle. 'It looks as if it ought to be Pickled.'
Mr Fledgeby collapsed under the word 'Pickled,' and groaned again. 'My kitchen is on this floor,' he said; 'you'll find brown paper in a dresser-drawer there, and a bottle of vinegar on a shelf. Would you have the kindness to make a few plasters and put 'em on? It can't be kept too quiet.'
'One, two--hum--five, six. You'll want six,' said the dress-maker.
'There's smart enough,' whimpered Mr Fledgeby, groaning and writhing again, 'for sixty.'
Miss Jenny repaired to the kitchen, scissors in hand, found the brown paper and found the vinegar, and skilfully cut out and steeped six large plasters. When they were all lying ready on the dresser, an idea occurred to her as she was about to gather