第126章

`I'm as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,' said Mark. `But, Lord, I have reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that's my opinion. Take care how you go:' for they were now ascending the stairs. `You recollect the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the very small trunk, sir?'

`The valise? Yes.'

`Well, sir, there's been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash to-night, and they're put outside the bedroom doors here. If you take notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what a many fronts, you'll penetrate the mystery of his packing.'

But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so had no interest in this discovery. Mr. Tapley, nothing dashed by his indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the bed-chamber prepared for his reception: which was a very little narrow room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest without a lid; two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are commonly tried upon at a ready-made establishment in England; a little looking-glass nailed against the wall; and a washing-table, with a jug and ewer that might have been mistaken for a milk-pot and slop-basin.

`I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,' said Mark. `They've certainly got a touch of the 'phoby, sir.'

`I wish you would pull off my boots for me,' said Martin, dropping into one of the chairs `I am quite locked up. Dead beat, Mark.'

`You won't say that to-morrow morning, sir,' returned Mr. Tapley; `nor even to-night, sir, when you've made a trial of this.' With which he produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.

`What do you call this?' said Martin.

But Mr. Tapley made no answer: merely plunging a reed into the mixture -- which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice -- and signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through that agency by the enraptured drinker.

Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up his eyes once in excstasy. He paused no more until the goblet was drained to the last drop.

`There, sir!' said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face;

`if ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in the way, all you've got to do is, to ask the nearest man to go and fetch a cobbler.'

`To go and fetch a cobbler?' repeated Martin.

`This wonderful invention, sir,' said Mark, tenderly patting the empty glass, `is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long; cobbler, when you name it short. Now you're equal to having your boots took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.'

Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the bootjack.

`Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,' said Martin; `but, good Heaven, if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or money!'

`Well, sir!' replied the imperturbable Tapley; `from what we've seen already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn't do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.'

`Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!' said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; `what would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!'

`Oh, Dragon, Dragon!' echoed Mark, cheerfully, `if there warn't any water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back, I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there's a fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn't give in on the door-steps, or you'll never get up to the top!'

`Wisely said, Mark,' cried Martin. `We must look forward.'

`In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked backward was turned into stones,' replied Mark; `and my opinion always was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served 'em right. I wish you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!'

`They must be of home, then,' said Martin, as he lay down in bed.

`So I say, too,' whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and in his own room; `for if there don't come a time afore we're well out of this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping up one's jollity, I'm a United Statesman!'

Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle -- a dream within a dream -- as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the ocean to the English shore.