English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader,
I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be
astonished still more.
PART II.
“You will excuse me,” I said, to my companion, “for remarking, that when
you addressed the individual sitting on the porcelain stool, with his
head in his lap, your ordinarily benevolent features”--(this I confess
was a bouncer, for between ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking
rascal than Mons. P. I have seldom set eyes on)--“your ordinarily
handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You
grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you went up to the
cei--, pardon me, as I THOUGHT you did, when I fell down in a fit in
your chambers;” and I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble;
I did not care to offend the man--I did not DARE to offend the man.
I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking
refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of speaking to a
policeman, but not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed
him like his dog. I COULD not get away from him. So, you see, I went
on meanly conversing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence.
I remember, when I was a little boy at school, going up fawning and
smiling in this way to some great hulking bully of a sixth-form boy.
So I said in a word, “Your ordinarily handsome face wore a disagreeable
expression,” &c.
“It is ordinarily VERY handsome,” said he, with such a leer at a couple
of passers-by, that one of them cried, “Oh, crikey, here's a
precious guy!” and a child, in its nurse's arms, screamed itself
into convulsions. “Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau,
cerdainement,” continued Mr. Pinto; “but you were right. That--that
person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no love
lost between us, as you say; and the world never knew a more worthless
miscreant. I hate him, voyez-vous? I hated him alife; I hate him dead.
I hate him man; I hate him ghost: and he know it, and tremble before me.
If I see him twenty tausend years hence--and why not?--I shall hate him
still. You remarked how he was dressed?”
“In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat,
a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder. He must
have worn a pigtail--only--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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