Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
"I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures," said Miss Pross, wildly crying, "that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are you capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?" "Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "I hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o' mine, I think not.
Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out.
Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock.
Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction. "You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. "Ah! I think so. I believe you."
The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear. "What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for me!" said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?"
Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open. After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court. "What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to. "Nothing yet."
Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health.
"The evenin' followin' the ad in the weeklies, I was settin' smokin' on the back piazza of the shut-up main hotel, when I heard the gate click and somebody crunchin' along the clam-shell path. I sung out: 'Ahoy, there! and the cruncher, whoever he was, come my way. Then I made out that he was a tall young chap, with his hands in his pockets. "'Good evenin', says he. 'Is this Mr. Brown?
"It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one!
Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking