Next morning,
Sally Nutter was to be scalped, roasted, and eaten up, and the night was
spent in savage whoopings, songs and dances. They had got a reprobate
blind fiddler into the parlour, where their punch-bowl steamed--a most
agreeable and roistering sinner, who sang indescribable songs to the
quaver of his violin, and entertained the company with Saturnalian
vivacity, jokes, gibes, and wicked stories. Larry Cleary, thou man of
sin and music! methinks I see thee now. Thy ugly, cunning, pitted face,
twitching and grinning; thy small, sightless orbs rolling in thy devil's
merriment, and thy shining forehead red with punch.
In the kitchen things were not more orderly; M. M.'s lean maid was making
merry with the bailiff, and a fat and dreadful trollop with one
eye--tipsy, noisy, and pugnacious.
Poor little Sally Nutter and her maids kept dismal vigil in her
bed-room. But that her neighbours and her lawyer would in no sort permit
it, the truth is, the frightened little soul would long ago have made
herself wings, and flown anywhere for peace and safety.
It is remarkable how long one good topic, though all that may be said
upon it has been said many scores of times, will serve the colloquial
purposes of the good folk of the kitchen or the nursery.
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