"What are you doing? for Heaven's sake, what are you doing?" cried
Russelton, starting up; "do you mean to kill me?"

"Kill you!" said Sir Willoughby, quite aghast.

"Yes; kill me! is it not quite cold enough already in this d--d seafaring
place, without making my only retreat, humble as it is, a theatre for
thorough draughts? Have I not had the rheumatism in my left shoulder, and
the ague in my little finger, these last six months? and must you now
terminate my miserable existence at one blow, by opening that abominable
lattice? Do you think, because your great frame, fresh from the Yorkshire
wolds, and compacted of such materials, that one would think, in eating
your beeves, you had digested their hides into skin--do you think,
because your limbs might be cut up into planks for a seventy-eight, and
warranted water-proof without pitch, because of the density of their
pores--do you think, because you are as impervious as an araphorostic
shoe, that I, John Russelton, am equally impenetrable, and that you are
to let easterly winds play about my room like children, begetting rheums
and asthmas and all manner of catarrhs? I do beg, Sir Willoughby
Townshend, that you will suffer me to die a more natural and civilized
death;" and so saying, Russelton sank down into his chair, apparently in
the last state of exhaustion.

Sir Willoughby, who remembered the humourist in all his departed glory,
and still venerated him as a temple where the deity yet breathed, though
the altar was overthrown, made to this extraordinary remonstrance no
other reply than a long whiff, and a "Well, Russelton, dash my wig (a
favourite oath of Sir W.'s) but you're a queer fellow."