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Taggart, what o’clock is it?’ ‘Well, sir!’ said I, rising, ‘as you cannot assist me, I will now take my leave; I thank you sincerely for your kind reception, and will trouble you no longer.’ ‘Oh, don’t go. I wish to have some further conversation with you; and perhaps I may hit upon some plan to benefit you.
Whereupon the tempter within me said—‘And, now you have flung down the pen, you may as well fling yourself out of the window; what remains for you to do?’ Why, to take it up again, thought I to myself, for I did not like the latter suggestion at all—and then forthwith I resumed the pen, and wrote with greater vigour than before, from about six o’clock in the evening until I could hardly see, when I rested for a while, when the tempter within me again said, or appeared to say—‘All you have been writing is stuff, it will never do—a drug—a mere drug’; and methought these last words were uttered in the gruff tones of the big publisher. ‘A thing merely to be sneezed at,’ a voice like that of Taggart added; and then I seemed to hear a sternutation,—as I probably did, for recovering from a kind of swoon, I found myself shivering with cold.
Along toward eight o’clock that night "Lady Belle" anchored somewhere in the Sound and tugged vigorously at her cables all night. With the dawn she headed back towards New York.
The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt, and a prayer-book, from our next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting that he might be called punctually at ten o’clock next morning—not before, as he was much fatigued. He was called, and did not answer: he was called again, but there was no reply.
“Just in time to catch dad and drive him home from the office,” I said to myself, for I knew that he left the office of his big paper-mill down at the docks at five o’clock. I jumped into the car and bowled along down Spring Street and the Front Street hill and arrived at the mill office at exactly five. Dad wasn’t in sight so I decided to turn around and wait for him at the curb.
You cannot imagine the feverish state of irritation we are in, lest the interests of science should be sacrificed to the prejudices of a brute creature, who is not endowed with sufficient sense to foresee the incalculable benefits which the whole human race may derive from so very slight a concession on his part.’ ‘Nine o’clock.
So I am taking her some custard pie, and a bit of toasted cheese.” “Oh, of course we’ll be good,” promised Bawly. “But if you don’t come home in time for supper, mamma, what shall we eat?” “I have made up a cold supper for you and your papa and Grandpa Croaker,” said Mrs. No-tail. “You will find it in the oven of the stove. You may eat at 5 o’clock, but I think I’ll be back before then.”
At last we were off, about half-past two o’clock in the morning. It was a beautiful, clear, moonlit night, so clear, indeed, that we could see the Dover lights almost from Calais harbor.
She was telling it all to Granny, who had been away on mysterious business of her own. “It’s been like a beehive here ever since eight o’clock this morning. If we’d each of us had an extra pair of hands at our knees and another at our waists, perhaps we could have begun to wait on all the people.” “Sure ’twas no more than you deserved for being such busy little bees,” Granny approved.
Then, he related how shocked he had been, to see barrels of beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after week; and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two days together, to count the people who went in for beer between the hours of twelve and one o’clock alone—which, by-the-bye, was the time at which the great majority of the Mudfog people dined.
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