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The long walk and the warm beer and fire sent Paul to his hay-nest so heavy with sleep, that he never stirred till next morning he was wakened by Tom Boldre, the shuffler, kicking him severely, and swearing at him for a lazy fellow, who stayed out at night and left him to do his work. Paul stumbled to his feet, quite confused by the pain, and feeling for his shoes in the dark loft.
Ah, I know, Frank, who has put all this nonsense in your head! It is that gossiping old Shuffler. I'll give him a lecture when I next catch him," and she shook her fist comically in the air, to the intense wonderment of Miss Spight, who was crossing the road. "But, mind, I didn't tell you so, Miss Pimpernell. Don't tell him that I repeated what he said?" "Stuff and nonsense," she said.
We next came across old Shuffler, the house-agent, waddling along, with his sound eye rolling buoyantly on its axis, while the artificial orb glared steadily forward in a fixed, glassy stare. "Bootiful weether!" said he, cordially, to me, touching his hat "bootiful weether, sir!" "It is a fine day," I responded. "A merry Christmas to you, Mr Shuffler."
In addition to this inestimable treasure, I had become, by this time, flogged into the school routine of business, and could now, with ease, perform the requisite and daily tasks, no longer laying in any claim to the designation of a shuffler, at least to the eyes of the vulgar. My four remaining years then, at Eton, formed, indeed, a dream of happiness.
'You you're a shuffler, sir, gasped the furious doctor, 'a poltroon a coward a liar a a will nothing induce you to give me your card, sir! 'Oh! I see, said the stranger, half aside, 'negus too strong here liberal landlord very foolish very lemonade much better hot rooms elderly gentlemen suffer for it in the morning cruel cruel; and he moved on a step or two.
He had armed himself for this occasion with an arsenal of quotations from Audley's speeches, taken out of Hansard's Debates; and, garbling these texts in the unfairest and most ingenious manner, he contrived to split consistency into such fragments of inconsistency to cut so many harmless sentences into such unpopular, arbitrary, tyrannical segments of doctrine that he made a very pretty case against the enlightened and incorruptible Egerton, as shuffler and trimmer, defender of jobs, and eulogist of Manchester massacres, etc.
I did want to let you know to have the delight of not being a liar and a shuffler for once. I shall not say such things again. I am not going to shock anybody else, for Bob's sake. Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father. None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that. I shall hold my tongue.
"But you had better not couple people's names together in that way. Why, it's actionable!" I added, knowing the house-agent's mortal dread of anything connected with the law. "But you won't spread it no further, Mr Lorton?" he said, anxiously, the sound eye looking at me with a beseeching expression. "I won't, Shuffler," I answered; "take care that you don't!"
"Same to you, sir, and many on 'em," he replied, courteously. "Thank you, Shuffler," I said, satisfied with the colloquy, "but I must now say good day!" "Good day, and a 'appy noo year to you," answered he, passing on his way. Really, everybody appeared to be very civil and good natured to- day; and everything joyous and rose-coloured!
He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have suffered to make a fortune for a braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of his prosperity. Had he been a crown prince, he could not have been more weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful.
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