Do what they might, there was no keeping down the
butcher. His sturdy nature would break through all their
glozings. He had a hearty vulgar good-humor that was
irrepressible. His very jokes made his sensitive daughters
shudder, and he persisted in wearing his blue cotton coat of a
morning, dining at two o'clock, and having a "bit of sausage with
his tea."
He was doomed, however, to share the unpopularity of his family.
He found his old comrades gradually growing cold and civil to
him, no longer laughing at his jokes, and now and then throwing
out a fling at "some people" and a hint about "quality binding."
This both nettled and perplexed the honest butcher; and his wife
and daughters, with the consummate policy of the shrewder sex,
taking advantage of the circumstance, at length prevailed upon
him to give up his afternoon's pipe and tankard at Wagstaff's, to
sit after dinner by himself and take his pint of port--a liquor
he detested--and to nod in his chair in solitary and dismal
gentility.
The Miss Lambs might now be seen flaunting along the streets in
French bonnets with unknown beaux, and talking and laughing so
loud that it distressed the nerves of every good lady within
hearing. They even went so far as to attempt patronage, and
actually induced a French dancing master to set up in the
neighborhood; but the worthy folks of Little Britain took fire at
it, and did so persecute the poor Gaul that he was fain to pack
up fiddle and dancing-pumps and decamp with such precipitation
that he absolutely forgot to pay for his lodgings.
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