"Well, I don't know any swells," said Billy Dunlop, "and I don't think I want to. From what I've seen of 'em, they're scarcely so convivial as they might be. Not in the drinking line; I don't mean that--they're all there; but in the talking. And talking of talking, Mr. Wainwright, we've not had the pleasure of hearing your charming voice for the last quarter of an hour. Has it come off at last?"
"Has what come off, Billy?" asked George Wainwright.
"The amputation. Has our father the eminent, &c, at last performed the operation and cut off our tongue? and is it then in a choice vial, neatly preserved in spirits-of-wine, covered over with a bit of a kid-glove, tied down with packthread, and placed on a shelf between a stethoscope and a volume of 'Quain's Anatomy': is that it?"
"Funny dog!" said George Wainwright, looking across at him. "I often wonder why you stop here, Billy, at two-forty, rising to three-eighty by annual increments of ten, when there's such a splendid future awaiting you in the ring. That mug of yours is worth a pound a-week alone; and then those charming witticisms, so new, so fresh, so eminently humorous----"
"How they would fetch the threepenny gallery! Why don't I talk? I do sometimes in your absence; but when you're here, I feel like one of 'those meaner beauties of the night, which poorly satisfy our eyes;' and when you begin I ask myself: 'What are you when the moon shall rise?'"
"Shut up, will you? not merely your mouth, but your inkstand, blotting-book, and all the rest of the paraphernalia by which you wring an existence out of a too-easily-satisfied Government. You seem to have forgotten it's Saturday."
"By Jove, so it is!" said George Wainwright.
"Yes, sir," continued Mr. Dunlop; "like that party in Shakespeare, who drew a dial from his poke, and said it was just ten, and in an hour it would be eleven, I've just looked at my watch and find that in ten minutes it will be one o'clock, at which hour, by express permission of her Majesty's Ministers, signed and sealed at a Cabinet Council, of which Mr. Arthur Helps was clerk, the gentlemen of H.M. Stannaries are permitted on Saturdays to--to cut it. That is the reason, odd as it may seem, why I like Saturday afternoon. Mr. Tennyson, I believe, knew some parties who found out a place where it was always Saturday afternoon. Mr. W. Dunlop presents his compliments to the Laureate, and would be obliged for an introduction to the said place and parties."