'
Next morning, when our breakfast was nearly ended, Dudley tapped at the
window with the end of his clay pipe--a 'churchwarden' Milly called
it--just such a long curved pipe as Joe Willet is made to hold between his
lips in those charming illustrations of 'Barnaby Rudge'--which we all know
so well--and lifting his 'wide-awake' with a burlesque salutation, which, I
suppose, would have charmed the 'Plume of Feathers,' he dropped, kicked and
caught his 'wide-awake,' with an agility and gravity, as he replaced it, so
inexpressibly humorous, that Milly went off in a loud fit of laughter, with
the ejaculation--
'Did you ever?'
It was odd how repulsively my confidence in my original identification
always revived on unexpectedly seeing Dudley after an interval.
I could perceive that this piece of comic by-play was meant to make a
suitable impression on me. I received it, however, with a killing gravity;
and after a word or two to Milly, he lounged away, having first broken his
pipe, bit by bit, into pieces, which he balanced in turn on his nose and
on his chin, from which features he jerked them into his mouth, with a
precision which, along with his excellent pantomime of eating them, highly
excited Milly's mirth and admiration.
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