“He has stayed late.”
“Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took a little poorly.”
“Say ‘taken,’ Tope—to the Dean,” the younger rook interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: “You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.”
Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been tendered to him.
“And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—” repeats the Dean; “when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—”
“Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially murmurs.
“—Poorly, Tope?”
“Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—”
“I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,’ Tope,” Mr. Crisparkle interposes with the same touch as before. “Not English—to the Dean.”
“Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect homage) condescendingly remarks, “would be preferable.”
“ Mr. Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short;” thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock, “when he came in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew Dazed .” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: “and a dimness