“Now s’posin’,” he continued, leaning forward and speaking in a tone whose careful intonation might have suggested a more than ordinary depth of wisdom and sagacity,—“s’posin’ a pore chap like me, as ain’t no property only this-’ere ‘little crooked house,’ as Tude calls it, and some o’ the properties I ’andles at the Drury—as I was a-sayin’,—s’posin’ now a’ old rough chap like me was jest to tell her all about herself, and who she is and all, and not no kith or kin o’ mine, let alone a daughter, as _she_ thinks—What do you reckon now ’ud be the upshot, eh?” And as Mr. Twiggs propounded this mysterious query he jabbed the poker prankishly in the short-ribs of the grate, at which the pot, as though humoring a joke it failed to comprehend wholly, set up a chuckling of such asthmatic violence that its smothered cachinnations tilted its copper lid till Mr. Twiggs was obliged to dash a cup of water in its face.
“And Tude’s a-comin’ of a’ age, too,” continued Mr. Twiggs, “when a more tenderer pertecter than a father, so to speak, wouldn’t be out o’ keepin’ with the nat’ral order o’ things, seein’ as how she’s sorto’ startin’ for herself-like now. And it’s a question in my mind, if it ain’t my bounden duty as her father—or ruther, who has been a father to her all her life—to kindo’ tell her jest how things is, and all—and how _I_ am, and everythink,—and how I feel as though I ort’o stand by her, as I allus have, and allus _have_ had her welfare in view, and kindo’ feel as how I allus—ort’o kindo’—ort’o kindo’”—and here Mr. Twiggs’s voice fell into silence so abruptly that the drowsy parrot started from its trance-like quiet and cried “Ortokindo! Ortokindo!” with such a strength of seeming mockery that it was brushed violently to the floor by the angry hand of Mr. Twiggs and went backing awkwardly beneath the table.
“Blow me,” said Mr. Twiggs, “if the knowin’ impidence of that-’ere bird ain’t astonishin’!” And then, after a serious controversy with the draught of his pipe, he went on with his deliberations.
“Lor! it were jest scrumptious to see Tude in ‘The Iron Chest’ last night! Now, I ain’t no actur myself,—I’ve been on, of course, a thousand times as ‘fillin’,’ ‘sogers’ and ‘peasants’ and the like, where I never had no lines, on’y in the ‘choruses’; but if I don’t know nothin’ but ‘All hail!—All hail!’ I’ve had the experience of bein’ under the baleful hinfluence of the hoppery-glass, and I’m free to say it air a ticklish position and no mistake. But _Tude_! w’y, bless you, she warn’t the first bit flustered, was she? ’Peared-like she jest felt perfectly at home-like—like her mother afore her! And I’m dashed if I didn’t feel the cold chills a-creepin’ and a-crawlin’ when she was a-singin’ ‘Down by the river there grows a green willer and a-weepin’ all night with the bank for her piller’; and when she come to the part about wantin’ to be buried there ’while the winds was a-blowin’ close by the stream where her tears was a-flowin’, and over her corpse to keep the green willers growin’,’ I’m d—d if I didn’t blubber right out!” And as the highly sympathetic Mr. Twiggs delivered this acknowledgment, he stroked the inner corners of his eyes, and rubbed his thumb and finger on his trousers.