This small work produced far greater consternation than the sudden change in the weather. Though it rained and blew, and whistled and streamed, nobody paid the slightest attention, nobody said 'What a change in the weather,' for all the world was deeply engrossed in reading about his asterisked self and his asterisked neighbour. _Chapter the Twenty-first_ CURTAIN POLLS There had been nothing to prepare Curtain Wells for its chastizement. No wreathed pamphlet warned readers in the most choice preliminary duff that a sarcastick comet would presently singe their vices, their follies and their vanities. Nobody had been invited to subscribe in advance to his own ridicule. As it were on the wings of a Westerly gale, these destructive little volumes settled upon the fields of Pleasure like locusts on a Bedouin plantation. Two speculative chap-book pedlars sold the first twenty to as many drinkers of chalybeate hastening home to breakfast. For those who stopped to buy there was no breakfast that morning. The kidneys and the bacon and the eggs and the ham and the loin chops and the red herrings and the toasted bread were neglected. The vanguard of purchasers were, in reading about neighbours, too much diverted, and, in reading about themselves, too indignant to eat. Out went the kidneys and the bacon and the eggs and the ham and the loin chops and the red herrings and the toasted bread, frozen stiff in their own fat; and out went the vanguard to warn the main army of fashion that scurrility, satire and malice were abroad in many metres. "Listen to this, Moon," ejaculated Major Tarry, as, undeterred by the driving wind, he strode along, quoting extracts that were perfectly inaudible to his companion. "Listen to this, will you listen to this," "_Like a lap-dog he's fed with a second-best spoon, And bays as he should at the sight of the Moon_." "Yes, but listen to this," said the Justice treading heavily in a puddle as he spoke. "_Do not tarry, M**n, but marry, While you're still upon the wax, Though above her, You can love her, And avoid the window tax_." "Very low, very low indeed," said Tarry. "So 'tis," quoth the Justice, "but the next verse is lower still." "_For that coat of Him we wrote of Will be in your parlour soon, And be reigning When you're waning, And we whisper horned M**n_." "Ha, ha," said Tarry, "low, d----d low! But 'sblood, the fellow has humour." "Humour," said the Justice, "you call this obscene doggerel, humour?" "In parts, sir, in parts." "I call it melancholy and libidinous." Mrs. Courteen was seated at her window disconsolately regarding the rain. "Gemini, child!" she exclaimed. "What can be the matter with Mr. Moon and the Major that they gesticulate so wildly." "They're reading books, ma'am," Betty announced. "Reading book, but they are standing at the street corner like Methodies!"