 | Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family |  |
ON LOCOMOTION.
“So they 've got you on the stage, Mrs. Partington,”
said we to the old lady, after seeing her name, on a
theatre bill, as one of the characters in a new burletta.
“On the stage!” replied she, and a gleam of memory
passed over her face like a ray of sunshine over a faded
landscape, and she looked out of the window, and down
the street, until her eye rested on an omnibus moving
quickly along, in the pride of paint and gold, and she
took passage in it, in fancy, and went along with it.
“Yes,” said she, “they did get me on the stage, because
it caused a nonsense in my stomach to ride inside; and
what a queer figure I did make on it, to be sure! But
that, dear, was five and twenty years ago, and it is so
queer they should remember it. O, them stages! I 've
heerd of people riding by easy stages, but I never saw
one. The easiest way that I ever rid was on a pillory
behind Paul, there. Easy stages, indeed! why, it shook
me as if it would shake the sensuality all out of me, and
I never got over it for a week. How different it is
now!” — and she looked at the omnibus just passing her
door, — “all you 've to do is to get into an ominous, all
cushioned nicely, with a whole picture-gallery round it,
to see for nothing, and afore you know it you are where
you want to go. Stages —”
“But it is the National stage,” we said.
“Well, well,” replied she, hastily, “'taint no difference;
only the national stage carried the mail, and
t'other, and I don't know but worse.”
“But they 've got you in the theatre, the National
Theatre,” we persisted, and showed her the bill.
She looked at it a moment, and wiped her specs, and
looked at it again in silence, as if her mind had n't got
back from the hard journey it had just taken. At that
moment a crash of glass called her hastily to the kitchen.
The floor was covered with fragments of that brittle
article, and a large ball hopped under a chair, as if
ashamed of itself; while Ike was seen, through the
broken window, making tracks speedily for the shed.
We left her picking up the glass, so that he might not
get it into his bare feet when he came in. Depend upon
it, he had to take a severe “talkin to” when she caught
him.
| Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family | |