Adoptive parents -- Fiction; Christmas stories; Deaf children -- Fiction; Short stories, English
I'll throw you in anything you ask for. There! Church-rates, abolition
of more malt tax, no malt tax, universal education to the highest mark,
or uniwersal ignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the
army or a dozen for every private once a month all round, Wrongs of Men
or Rights of Women--only say which it shall be, take 'em or leave 'em,
and I'm of your opinion altogether, and the lot's your own on your own
terms. There! You won't take it yet! Well, then, I'll tell you what
I'll do with you. Come! You _are_ such free and independent woters, and
I am so proud of you,--you _are_ such a noble and enlightened
constituency, and I _am_ so ambitious of the honour and dignity of being
your member, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of the
human mind can soar,--that I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll
throw you in all the public-houses in your magnificent town for nothing.
Will that content you? It won't? You won't take the lot yet? Well,
then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make the offer to the
next most magnificent town that can be discovered, I'll tell you what
I'll do. Take the lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets
of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. Not enough? Now
look here. This is the very furthest that I'm a going to. I'll make it
two thousand five hundred. And still you won't? Here, missis! Put the
horse--no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't like to turn my back upon you
neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty
pound. There! Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll count out two
thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to
be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up
that can. What do you say? Come now! You won't do better, and you may
do worse. You take it? Hooray! Sold again, and got the seat!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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