"What!" said Tappitt, sitting aghast with his mouth open. "Yes, T.; if you don't think of your family I must. What I'm saying Mr. Honyman has said before; and indeed all Baslehurst is saying the same thing. There's an offer made to you that will put your family on a footing quite genteel,--no gentlefolks in the county more so; and you, too, that are getting past your work!" "I ain't getting past my work." "I shouldn't say so, T., if it weren't for your own good,--and if I'm not to know about that, who is? It's all very well going about electioneering; and indeed it's just what gentlefolks is fit for when they're past their regular work; And I'm sure I shan't begrudge it so long as it don't cost anything; but that's not work you know, T." "Ain't I in the brewery every day for seven or eight hours, and often more?" "Yes, T., you are; and what's like to come of it if you go on so? What would be my feelings if I saw you brought into the house struck down with apoplepsy and paralepsy because I let you go on in that way when you wasn't fit? No, T.; I know my duty and I mean to do it. You know Dr. Haustus said only last month that you were that bilious--" "Pshaw! bilious! it's enough to make any man bilious!" "Or any dog," he would have added, had he thought of it. Thereupon Tappitt rushed away from his wife, back into his little office, and from that soon made his way to the Jew's committee-room at the Dragon, at which he was detained till nearly eleven o'clock at night. "It's a kind of work in which one has to do as much after dinner as before," he said to his wife when he got back. "For the matter of that," said she, "I think the after-dinner work is the chief part of it."