“I think he might—I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,” says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, “twenty times.”
Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers “Twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty guineas, twenty million twenty percent, twenty—” and is then cut short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it crushes her in the usual manner.
“You’re a brimstone idiot. You’re a scorpion—a brimstone scorpion! You’re a sweltering toad. You’re a chattering clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!” gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. “My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?”
Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a harlequin’s, he puts him smartly down in his chair again and adjusts his skullcap with such a rub that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.
“Oh Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed. “That’ll do. Thank you, my dear friend, that’ll do. Oh, dear me, I’m out of breath. Oh Lord!” And Mr. Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.
The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the philosophical reflection, “The name of your friend in the city begins with a D, comrade, and you’re about right respecting the bond.”