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Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy by Charles Dickens
page 5 of 38 (13%)
I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozenham
looking out of window! "Gentlemen," I says all of a tremble and ready to
drop "please to bring him into Major Jackman's apartments." So they
brought him into the Parlours, and when the Major spies his own curly-
brimmed hat on him which Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the
passage for a military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion that
he tips it off his head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with
his foot where it grazed long afterwards. "Major" I says "be cool and
advise me what to do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own youngest
brother." "Madam" says the Major "my advice is that you board and lodge
him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the proprietor when
exploded." "Major" I says "as a Christian you cannot mean your words."
"Madam" says the Major "by the Lord I do!" and indeed the Major besides
being with all his merits a very passionate man for his size had a bad
opinion of Joshua on account of former troubles even unattended by
liberties taken with his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this
conversation betwixt us he turns upon the littlest one with the biggest
hat and says "Come sir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my
mouldy straw?" My dear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed
almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so
overcome that I burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take my
keys and settle with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute
more," which was done several times both before and since, but still I
must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them
in being always so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for
his brother. Many a long year have I left off my widow's mourning not
being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot
help a little yielding to is when he writes "One single sovereign would
enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for my much-loved brother. I
vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would ever wear sables in
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