No help comes,
however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you,
and you are being smothered.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming
from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell your life
dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms
and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way,
and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe
a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a
life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that
it's Jim.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he says, recognising you at the same moment.
"Yes," you answer, rubbing your eyes; "what's happened?"
"Bally tent's blown down, I think," he says.
"Where's Bill?"
Then you both raise up your voices and shout for "Bill!" and the ground
beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard before
replies from out the ruin:
"Get off my head, can't you?"
And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily
aggressive mood - he being under the evident belief that the whole thing
has been done on purpose.
In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught
severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear
at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.
We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights; and hotel
it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was wet, or
when we felt inclined for a change.
Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval. He does not revel
in romantic solitude. Give him something noisy; and if a trifle low, so
much the jollier. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was
an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in
the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-
world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-
nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the
tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.
When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be
able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he
sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: "Oh, that dog will never
live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is
what will happen to him."
But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and
had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of
a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought
round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and
had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog
at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to
venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and
had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think
that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.
To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs
to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to
fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life;" and so,
as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and
hotels his most emphatic approbation.
Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all
four of us, the only thing left to discuss was what we should take with
us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he'd had enough
oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and have a
smile, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where you
could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.
George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he didn't); and, as
I had a presentiment that a little whisky, warm, with a slice of lemon,
would do my complaint good, the debate was, by common assent, adjourned
to the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.
CHAPTER III.
ARRANGEMENTS SETTLED. - HARRIS'S METHOD OF DOING WORK. - HOW THE ELDERLY,
FAMILY-MAN PUTS UP A PICTURE. - GEORGE MAKES A SENSIBLE, REMARK. -
DELIGHTS OF EARLY MORNING BATHING. - PROVISIONS FOR GETTING UPSET.
SO, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrange
our plans. Harris said:
"Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get a
bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery catalogue,
George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I'll make out a
list."
That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything
himself, and put it on the backs of other people.
He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such a
commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger
undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-
maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and
Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would
say:
