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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Ah! she was a hawful voman, that 'ere!" said Dummie, shaking his head. "But howsomever, the hurchin fell into good 'ands; for I be's sure you 'as been a better mother to 'un than the raal 'un!" "I was always a fool about childer," rejoined Mrs. Lobkins; "and I thinks as how little Paul was sent to be a comfort to my latter end! Fill the glass, Dummie."
It would seem by the contents of this chapter as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of MacGrawler, the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker, alike occasioned by him, appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects.
"Blow me tight!" said Dummie, "if it be n't as good a vay of passing the time as a cove as is fond of snuggery need desire!" This observation had no comfort for Paul, who recoiled, with all the maiden coyness of one to whom such unions are unfamiliar, from a matrimonial alliance with the snuggery of the House of Correction. He rather trusted to another source for consolation.
Pepper, surnamed the Long. The latter, however, while he obliged the heir to the Mug, never condescended to enter that noted place of resort; and the former, whenever he good-naturedly opened his purse-strings, did it with a hearty caution to shun the acquaintance of Long Ned, "a parson," said Dummie, "of wery dangerous morals, and not by no manner of means a fit 'sociate for a young gemman of cracter like leetle Paul!"
"Ay, Robert," she answered, without preface, the third day, "I'm thinkin' there's a heap o' things, gien I hed them, 'at wad help me to ken what the Maister spak till. It wad be a sin no to lat the laddie learn. But wha'll tak the trible needfu' to the learnin' o' a puir dummie?" "Lat him gang doon to the Mains, an' herd wi' Donal," answered Robert.
"True!" said the lady; "they died game, and I be n't ashamed of 'em. But I owes a duty to Paul's mother, and I wants Paul to have a long life. I would send him to school, but you knows as how the boys only corrupt one another. And so, I should like to meet with some decent man, as a tutor, to teach the lad Latin and vartue!" "My eyes!" cried Dummie; aghast at the grandeur of this desire.
"Ay," cried the dame, laughing, "I fancies you war not pleased with the bargain. I thought you war too old a ragmerchant to be so free with the blunt; howsomever, I supposes it war the tinsel petticoat as took you in!" "As it has mony a viser man than the like of I," rejoined Dummie, who to his various secret professions added the ostensible one of a rag-merchant and dealer in broken glass.
Long and earnestly did the meek Dummie gaze on the face of the gentleman before him. While, however, Dummie Dunnaker, who was a little inclined to be shy, deliberated as to the propriety of claiming acquaintanceship, a dirty boy, with a face which betokened the frost, as Dummie himself said, like a plum dying of the scarlet fever, entered the room, with a newspaper in his dexter paw.
Lobkins, turning round after Paul's departure, and seeing the pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her comfort that she should unburden somewhere.
"Well, Dummie," said he, laughing, "I did not mean to hurt you, and there's an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame's ill-conduct; and so I wish you a good-morning." "Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?" said Dummie, grasping him by the tail of the coat. "The deuce a bit I know," answered our hero; "but I think I shall drop a call on Long Ned."
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