Sturk and Toole, behind backs, did not spare one another. Toole called
Sturk a 'horse doctor,' and 'the smuggler'--in reference to some affair
about French brandy, never made quite clear to me, but in which, I
believe, Sturk was really not to blame; and Sturk called him 'that
drunken little apothecary'--for Toole had a boy who compounded, under
the rose, his draughts, pills, and powders in the back parlour--and
sometimes, 'that smutty little ballad singer,' or 'that whiskeyfied
dog-fancier, Toole.' There was no actual quarrel, however; they met
freely--told one another the news--their mutual disagreeabilities were
administered guardedly--and, on the whole, they hated one another in a
neighbourly way.
Fat, short, radiant, General Chattesworth--in full, artillery
uniform--was there, smiling, and making little speeches to the ladies,
and bowing stiffly from his hips upward--his great cue playing all the
time up and down his back, and sometimes so near the ground when he
stood erect and threw back his head, that Toole, seeing Juno eyeing the
appendage rather viciously, thought it prudent to cut her speculations
short with a smart kick.
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