ss her"--the words
that followed thereupon were happily _not_ omitted: "but she was worth
the trouble,--six foot six with the lumbago might have done it." Several
of John's choicest--all-but jokes were also retained. As, where Dot
is objecting to be called by that pet diminutive, "'Why, what else are
you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her
waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give, 'A dot
and'--here he glanced at the baby--'a dot and carry'--I won't say it,
for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't know as
ever I was nearer." Tilly Slowboy and her charge, the baby, were, upon
every mention of them in the Reading, provocative of abundant laughter.
The earliest allusion to Miss Slowboy recording these characteristic
circumstances in regard to her costume, that it "was remarkable for the
partial development, on all possible and impossible occasions, of some
flannel vestment of a singular structure, also for affording glimpses in
the region of the back of a pair of stays, in colour a dead green." On
the introduction of the Mysterious Stranger--apparently all but stone
deaf--from the Carrier's cart, where he had been forgotten, the comic
influence of the Reading became irresistible.

Stranger (on noticing Dot) interrogatively to John.--"Your Daughter?"

Carrier, with the voice of a boatswain.--"Wife."

Stranger, with his hand to his ear, being not quite certain that he has
caught it.--"Niece?"

Carrier, with a roar.--"Wife."

Satisfied at last upon that point, the stranger asks of John, as a new
matter of curiosity to him, "Baby, yours?" Whereupon the Reader, _as_
John, "gave a gigantic nod, equivalent to an answer in the affirmative,
delivered through a speaking-trumpet."

Stranger, still unsatisfied, inquiring,--"Girl?".--"Bo-o-oy!" was
bellowed back by John Peerybingle. It was when Mrs. Peerybingle herself
took up the parable, however, that the merriment excited among the
audience became fairly irrepressible. Scarcely had the nearly stone-deaf
stranger added, in regard to the "Bo-o-oy,"--"Also very young, eh?"
(a comment previously applied by him to Dot) when the Reader, as Mrs.
Peerybingle, instantly struck in, at the highest pitch of his
voice, that is, of her voice (the comic effect of this being simply
indescribable)--"Two months and three da-ays! Vaccinated six weeks
ago-o! Took very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably
beauti