So when Michael's mother, some weeks later than the foregoing incident, remarked that it was getting on for time that her branch of the family should send a quartern of shelled peas and two pound of cooking-cherries to Aunt Elizabeth Jane as a seasonable gift, her lord and master had replied that he wasn't going within eleven mile of Hammersmith till to-morrow fortnight, but that he would entrust peas and cherries, as specified, to "Old Saturday Night," a fellow-coster, so named in derision of his adoption of teetotalism, his name being really Knight. He was also called Temperance Tommy, without irony, his name being really Thomas. He, a resident in Chiswick, would see that Aunt Elizabeth Jane got the consignment safely.
Michael's father did this in furtherance of a subtle scheme which succeeded. His son immediately said:--"Just you give _him_ 'em, and see if he don't sneak 'em. See if he don't bile the peas and make a blooming pudd'n of the cherries. You see if he don't! That's all I say, if you arsk me." A few interchanges on these lines ended in Michael undertaking to deliver the goods personally as a favour, time enough Sunday morning for Aunt Elizabeth Jane herself to make a pudding of the cherries, blooming or otherwise.
As a sequel, Michael arrived at his aunt's so early on the following Sunday that the peas and the cherries had to wait for hours to be cooked, while Aunt Elizabeth Jane talked with matrons round in the alley, and he himself took part in a short fishing expedition, nearly catching a roach, who got away. The Humanitarian--is that quite the correct word, by-the-by?--must rejoice at the frequency of this result in angling.
"The 'ook giv'," said Michael, returning disappointed. "Wot can you expect with inferior tarkle?" He then undertook to get a brown Toby jug filled at The Pigeons; though, being church-time--the time at which the Heathen avail themselves of their opportunity of stopping away from church--the purchase of one pint full up, and no cheating, was a statutable offence on the part of the seller.
But when a public has a little back-garden with rusticated woodwork seats, painful to those rash enough to avail themselves of them, and a negotiable wall you and your jug can climb over and descend from by the table no one ever gets his legs under owing to this same rusticity of structure, then you can do as Michael did, and make your presence felt by whistling through the keyhole, without fear of incriminating the Egeria of the beer-fountain in the locked and shuttered bar, near at hand.