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Updated: May 3, 2025
As to dressing a fly, one would sooner think of dressing a dinner. The result of the fly-dressing would resemble a small blacking-brush, perhaps, but nothing entomological. Then why, a persevering reader may ask, do I fish? Well, it is stronger than myself, the love of fishing; perhaps it is an inherited instinct, without the inherited power.
"What, ain't you saw him?" he demanded, trotting along, blacking-brush in hand, by my side. "Yes go away, do you hear? I don't want you walking beside me." "That there clock," said Billy, pointing up to a clock just over his usual place of business "that there clock's been gone seving a lump, and he ain't been." "It's nothing to do with me," I cried angrily.
"I've actually bragged of the Macklins and paraded the virtues of my ancestors." Alec made no answer. Down-stairs the big kitchen clock slowly struck seven. "I'll have to hurry," he remarked. Catching up his blacking-brush, he began polishing his shoes in nervous haste. "It's later than I thought. I'm due at the hotel in thirty minutes."
"Shine 'e boots, master?" he cried, flourishing a blacking-brush in either hand, and standing across my path. I stopped short, and answered solemnly, "Where's that sixpence you stole out of my pocket, you young thief?" I expected he would be overawed and conscience-stricken by the sudden accusation. But instead of that he fired up with the most virtuous indignation.
He had arranged to perform this menial task in a remote corner of the store, as much out of sight as possible. The duty had become still more disagreeable since the young lady haunted the place, for he feared she would learn to associate him only with the dust-brush and blacking-brush. Just behind where he usually stood, a good picture had been hung, under Mr.
Hard on Wrench's heels came also one Sam Grigg, page-boy, who on particular occasions wore a livery jacket with three rows of plated pill-like buttons, but who was now in the fatigue-dress of rolled-up shirt sleeves and a very dirty apron, while his left-hand was occupied by a boot, the right by a blacking-brush, which seemed to have been applied several times to an itching nose, his chin, and one side of his face, rather accounting for the plural nickname given him by the boys of "Day & Martin."
Meanwhile the conversation of Messieurs Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush. "Queroulet!" said Lepany, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe. "Who spoke of Queroulet?
"The Doctor!" he ejaculated, and he hurried into the house, his exit from the playground being followed by a fresh burst of cheering and a peculiar triumphant dance on the part of the page, accompanied by the waving of boot and blacking-brush, till, in his disgust, Slegge made a rush at him from behind, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and ran him rapidly to the boot-house, sent him flying in with a savage kick, and banged the door after him.
I had no comfort on earth save the thought that I had been brutal to Briggs, and that he sat in an obscure corner of the room among some little girls in Long Division, hiding, behind an assistant teacher's skirts, the whitey-brown toe which my blacking-brush refused to refresh, while I bore my grief upon a pair of new boots plentifully provided with squeak-leather.
A thick-set, florid man of genial appearance, having a dark moustache, a breezy manner and a head of hair resembling a very hard-worked blacking-brush, awaited them. This was Detective-Sargeant Sowerby with whom Stuart was already acquainted. "Good-morning, Sergeant Sowerby," he said. "Good-morning, sir. I hear that someone was pulling your leg last night."
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