The Baron was left alone with Jemimarann; and, whether it was the
champagne, or that my dear girl looked more than commonly pretty, I
don't know; but Madame Flicflac had not been gone a minute, when the
Baron dropped on his knees, and made her a regular declaration.
Poor Orlando Crump had found me out by this time, and was standing by
my side, listening, as melancholy as possible, to the famous Bohemian
Minnesingers, who were singing the celebrated words of the poet Gothy:--
“Ich bin ya hupp lily lee, du bist ya hupp lily lee.
Wir sind doch hupp lily lee, hupp la lily lee.”
“Chorus--Yodle-odle-odle-odle-odle-odle hupp! yodle-odle-aw-o-o-o!”
They were standing with their hands in their waistcoats, as usual,
and had just come to the “o-o-o,” at the end of the chorus of the
forty-seventh stanza, when Orlando started: “That's a scream!” says he.
“Indeed it is,” says I; “and, but for the fashion of the thing, a very
ugly scream too:” when I heard another shrill “Oh!” as I thought; and
Orlando bolted off, crying, “By heavens, it's HER voice!” “Whose voice?”
says I. “Come and see the row,” says Tag. And off we went, with a
considerable number of people, who saw this strange move on his part.
We came to the tent, and there we found my poor Jemimarann fainting;
her mamma holding a smelling-bottle; the Baron, on the ground, holding
a handkerchief to his bleeding nose; and Orlando squaring at him, and
calling on him to fight if he dared.
My Jemmy looked at Crump very fierce. “Take that feller away,” says she;
“he has insulted a French nobleman, and deserves transportation, at the
least.”
Poor Orlando was carried off. “I've no patience with the little minx,”
says Jemmy, giving Jemimarann a pinch. “She might be a Baron's lady; and
she screams out because his Excellency did but squeeze her hand.”
“Oh, mamma! mamma!” sobs poor Jemimarann, “but he was t-t-tipsy.”
“T-t-tipsy! and the more shame for you, you hussy, to be offended with a
nobleman who does not know what he is doing.”
A TOURNAMENT.
“I say, Tug,” said MacTurk, one day soon after our flareup at Beulah,
“Kilblazes comes of age in October, and then we'll cut you out, as I
told you: the old barberess will die of spite when she hears what we
are going to do. What do you think? we're going to have a tournament!”
“What's a tournament?” says Tug, and so said his mamma when she heard
the news; and when she knew what a tournament was, I think, really, she
WAS as angry as MacTurk said she would be, and gave us no peace for days
together. “What!” says she, “dress up in armor, like play-actors, and
run at each other with spears? The Kilblazes must be mad!” And so I
thought, but I didn't think the Tuggeridges would be mad too, as they
were: for, when Jemmy heard that the Kilblazes' festival was to be, as
yet, a profound secret, what does she do, but send down to the Morning
Post a flaming account of
“THE PASSAGE OF ARMS AT TUGGERIDGEVIILLE!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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