Mrs Lirripers Legacy | Page 5

have judged to
be in the feather-bed trade if they had not announced the law, so fluffy
were their personal appearance. "Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to
the littlest of the two in the biggest hat, "rivet on my fetters!" Imagine
my feelings when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons
and Miss Wozenham looking out of window! "Gentlemen," I says all of
a tremble and ready to drop "please to bring him into Major Jackman's
apartments." So they brought him into the Parlours, and when the
Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him which Joshua Lirriper
had whipped off its peg in the passage for a military disguise he goes
into such a tearing passion that he tips it off his head with his hand and
kicks it up to the ceiling with his foot where it grazed long afterwards.
"Major" I says "be cool and advise me what to do with Joshua my dead
and gone Lirriper's own youngest brother." "Madam" says the Major
"my advice is that you board and lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a
handsome gratuity to the proprietor when exploded." "Major" I says "as
a Christian you cannot mean your words." "Madam" says the Major "by
the Lord I do!" and indeed the Major besides being with all his merits a
very passionate man for his size had a bad opinion of Joshua on
account of former troubles even unattended by liberties taken with his
apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt us he
turns upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says "Come sir!
Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?" My dear
at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed almost entirely in
padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so overcome that I
burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take my keys and settle
with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute more,"
which was done several times both before and since, but still I must
remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them in
being always so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning
for his brother. Many a long year have I left off my widow's mourning
not being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot
help a little yielding to is when he writes "One single sovereign would
enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for my much-loved

brother. I vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would ever
wear sables in memory of him but Alas how short-sighted is man, How
keep that vow when penniless!" It says a good deal for the strength of
his feelings that he couldn't have been seven year old when my poor
Lirriper died and to have kept to it ever since is highly creditable. But
we know there's good in all of us,--if we only knew where it was in
some of us,--and though it was far from delicate in Joshua to work
upon the dear child's feelings when first sent to school and write down
into Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of post and got it, still
he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest brother and mightn't have meant
not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his affection took him
down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard and might have meant
to keep sober but for bad company. Consequently if the Major HAD
played on him with the garden-engine which he got privately into his
room without my knowing of it, I think that much as I should have
regretted it there would have been words betwixt the Major and me.
Therefore my dear though he played on Mr. Buffle by mistake being
hot in his head, and though it might have been misrepresented down at
Wozenham's into not being ready for Mr. Buffle in other respects he
being the Assessed Taxes, still I do not so much regret it as perhaps I
ought. And whether Joshua Lirriper will yet do well in life I cannot say,
but I did hear of his coming, out at a Private Theatre in the character of
a Bandit without receiving any offers afterwards from the regular
managers.
Mentioning Mr. Baffle gives an instance of there being good in persons
where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr. Buffle's
manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable. To collect is
one thing, and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being
gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is another,
over taxing you have no control but suspecting is