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For the fust six months it was all very well; but then she grew gloomier and gloomier, though A. did everythink in life to please her. Old Shum used to come reglarly four times a wick to Cannon Row, where he lunched, and dined, and teed, and supd. The pore little man was a thought too fond of wine and spirits; and many and many's the night that I've had to support him home.
Speak, sir, speak!" and she folded her arms quite fierce, and looked like Mrs. Siddums in the Tragic Mews. "I came here, Mrs. Shum," said he, "because I loved your daughter, or I never would have condescended to live in such a beggarly hole. I have treated her in every respect like a genlmn, and she is as innocent now, ma'm, as she was when she was born.
"Dat poor teevil," he would say, "is wort twenty pounds, well, I am good for tree hundred, in gold and silver, and provinch notes, and de mortgage on Burkit Crowse's farm for twenty-five pounds ten shillings and eleven pence halfpenny fifteen times as much as he is, pesides ten pounds interest." Tree hundred pounds! Vell, it's a great shum; but vat shall I do mid it?
She used to bust into tears when Altamont came home: she used to sigh and wheep over the pore child, and say, "My child, my child, your father is false to me;" or, "your father deceives me;" or "what will you do when your pore mother is no more?" or such like sentimental stuff. It all came from Mother Shum, and her old trix, as I soon found out.
And then Miss Shum went bouncing up the stairs again, little knowing of Haltamont's return. I'd long before observed that my master had an anchoring after Mary Shum; indeed, as I have said, it was purely for her sake that he took and kep his lodgings at Pentonwille.
The younger girls, too, were always bouncing and thumping about the house, with torn pinnyfores, and dogs-eard grammars, and large pieces of bread and treacle. I never see such a house. As for Mrs. Shum, she was such a fine lady, that she did nothink but lay on the drawing-room sophy, read novels, drink, scold, scream, and go into hystarrix.
My friend Colonel Dhere Shum Shere now came up, whistling the Sturm Marsch, and challenged me to a game of billiards: he was in his manner more thoroughly English than any native I ever knew, and both in appearance and disposition looked as if he was an Anglo-Saxon who had been dyed by mistake.
The people from up stairs came to see what was the matter, as I was cussin and crying out. "It's only Charles, ma," screamed out Miss Betsy. "Where's Mary?" says Mrs. Shum, from the sofy. "She's in Master's room, miss," said I. "She's in the lodger's room, ma," cries Miss Shum, heckoing me. "Very good; tell her to stay there till he comes back."
Buckmaster died, leaving nothink; nothink except four ugly daughters by Miss Slamcoe: and her forty pound a year was rayther a narrow income for one of her appytite and pretensions. In an unlucky hour for Shum she met him. He was a widower with a little daughter of three years old, a little house at Pentonwille, and a little income about as big as her own.
"Oh, why," screeched she, "why did I ever leave a genteel famly, where I ad every ellygance and lucksry, to marry a creatur like this? He is unfit to be called a man, he is unworthy to marry a gentlewoman; and as for that hussy, I disown her. Thank heaven she an't a Slamcoe; she is only fit to be a Shum!"
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