"'Tis hard to bid good-b'ye to an old friend that we may never see again! Heigho! I'm sorry and sick; as cross and as queer as the hatband of Dick! Good-b'ye to St. Bartholomew."
This was sighed forth by the lean conjuror, who, as he emitted a cloud of tobacco-smoke, seemed ready to pipe his eye, and responded to by the tragedy queen with a look ultra tragical!
"Bah!" chuckled the corpulent conjuror, "à bas the blue devils! If ruin must come, good luck send that it may be blue. Though poor in purse, let me be rich in nose! Saint Bartlemy in a consumption--ha! ha! Pinched for standing-room, the comical old grig laughs and lies down! and, so droll he looks in dissolution, that I must have my lark out, though one of his boa-con-strictors should threaten to suck me down in a lump. He dies full of years and fun, the patriarch of posture-masters and puppet-showmen! Merry be his memory! and Scaramouches eternal caper round his sarcophagus! Shall we cry him a canting canticle? Rather let us chant a rattling roundelay!"
And mountebanks follow it, married and single!
Nothing could resist the hilarity of Mr. Rumfiz. The tragedy queen gave a lop-sided smile from under the ruins of a straw-bonnet; the motion-master grinned approbation; Mr. Glumfiz was tumultuously tickled. At this moment an infantine tumbler, dressed in a tinselled scarlet jacket dirty-white muslin-fringed trousers, and yellow leather pumps, made a professional entry on his head and hands, to summon the two conjurors from their cups to their balls.
"Keep the blue fire hot till I come, Mr. Glumfiz!" said the Lauréat.
"It won't cool," replied the lean conjuror.
The tragedy queen now received a call from Cardinal Wolsey, to relieve Miss Narcissa Nimble-pins on the Pandean pipes and double drum. The little Melpomene assured Mr. Bosky of her high consideration, and, leaning on the mountebank messenger's arm, bobbed and backed out of the parlour very gracefully. But the motion-master would have been immoveable, had not his tawdry better-half, who had nothing of a piece but her tongue, hurried in with, the news that their stage-manager, having spitefully cut the wires, puppets and trade were at a stand-still.
The Lauréat being left solus, exhibited a disposition to compose himself over a cigar, an indulgence at which his eyes sympathetically winked. Should we draw aside the curtain between his box and ours?