Previous - Next

B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all
this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with
piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week
into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with!
Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep
a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more
flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you," here he addressed his
wife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as
rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is
strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the
pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the
better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it
from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket,
and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!"

Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too.
You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband
and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks
from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook
himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business.
In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes,
and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did,
kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that
poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet,
where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop,
mother. --Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm,
darting in again with an undutiful grin.

Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his
breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular
animosity.

"Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?"

His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing."

"Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather
expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's
petitions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home.
I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!"

Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a
party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher
worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any
four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed
his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like
an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth
to the occupation of the day.

It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite
description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consisted
of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which
stool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every

Previous - Next