in the world for babbies, and will cure you of bringing your cussed
monkeys here, as if you all thought our shop was a hinfant school.

"Where's your book, Susan Travers! Left at home! Then you may go and
fetch it. No books, no tommy. You are Jones's wife, are you? Ticket for
three and sixpence out of eighteen shillings wages. Is this the only
ticket you have brought? There's your money; and you may tell your
husband he need not take his coat off again to go down our shaft. He
must think us cussed fools! Tell him I hope he has got plenty of money
to travel into Wales, for he won't have no work in England again, or my
name ayn't Diggs. Who's pushing there? I'll be among you; I'll close the
shop. If I do get hold of some of you cussed women, you shan't forget
it. If anybody will tell me who is pushing there, they shall have their
bacon for seven-pence. Will nobody have bacon for seven-pence? Leagued
together, eh! Then everybody shall have their bacon for ten-pence.
Two can play at that. Push again, and I'll be among you," said the
infuriated little tyrant. But the waving of the multitude, impatient,
and annoyed by the weather, was not to be stilled; the movement could
not be regulated; the shop was in commotion; and Master Joseph Diggs,
losing all patience, jumped on the counter, and amid the shrieks of the
women, sprang into the crowd. Two women fainted; others cried for their
bonnets; others bemoaned their aprons; nothing however deterred Diggs,
who kicked and cuffed and cursed in every quarter, and gave none. At
last there was a general scream of horror, and a cry of "a boy killed."

The senior Diggs, who, from his eminence, had hitherto viewed the scene
with unruffled complacency; who, in fact, derived from these not unusual
exhibitions the same agreeable excitement which a Roman emperor might
have received from the combats of the circus; began to think that
affairs were growing serious, and rose to counsel order and enforce
amiable dispositions. Even Master Joseph was quelled by that mild voice
which would have become Augustus. It appeared to be quite true that
a boy was dead. It was the little boy who, sent to get a loaf for
his mother, had complained before the shop was opened of his fainting
energies. He had fallen in the fray, and it was thought, to use the
phrase of the comely dame who tried to rescue him, "that he was quite
smothered."

They carried him out of the shop; the perspiration poured off him; he
h