The plate cleared, and washed down with a tumbler of port, Maxley resumed, and informed the doctor that the mouse was at this moment in his garden eating his bulbs. “And I be come here to put an end to her, if I've any luck at all.” Sampson told him he needn't trouble. “Nature has put an end to her as long as her body.” Mr. Maxley was puzzled for a moment, then opened his mouth from ear to ear in a guffaw that made the glasses ring. His humour was perverse. He was wit-proof and fun-proof; but at a feeble jest would sometimes roar like a lion inflated with laughing-gas. Laughed he ever so loud and long, he always ended abruptly and without gradation--his laugh was a clean spadeful dug out of Merriment. He resumed his gravity and his theme all in an instant. “White arsenic she won't look at for I've tried her; but they tell me there's another sweetmeat come up, which they call it striek nine.” “Hets! let the poor beasty alone. Life's as sweet tit as tus.” “If _you_ was a gardener, you'd feel for the bulbs, not for the varmin,” remonstrated Maxley rather arrogantly. “But bein' a man of sceince, I feel for th' higher organisation. Mice are a part of Nature, as much as market-gardeners.” “So be stoats, and adders, and doctors.” Sampson appealed: “Jintlemen, here's a pretty pashint: reflects on our lairned profission, and it never cost him a guinea, for the dog never pays.” “Don't let my chaff choke ye, doctor. That warn't meant for _you_ altogether. So if you _have_ got a little bit of that 'ere about you----” “I'm not a ratcatcher, my man: I don't go with dith in my pocket, like the surgeons that carry a lancet. And if I had Murder in both pockets, you shouldn't get any. Here's a greedy dog! got a thousand pounds in the bank, and grudges his healer a guinea, and his mouse a stand-up bite.”