came in with his respectable head, professional collar, and
virtuous necktie, Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin could not choose but rise. Mr.
Bumpkin meekly pulled his hair, and humbly bowed obeisance as to his
benefactor. Mrs. Bumpkin curtseyed as to a superior power, whom she
could not recognize as a benefactor. Joe stood up, and looked as if he
couldn't quite make out what Mr. Prigg was. He knew he worked the Law
somehow, and "summut like as a man works a steam-threshing machine, but
how or by what means, was a mystery unrevealed to the mind of the simple
soldier."

"Good morning! good morning!" said Mr. Prigg, after the manner of a
patriarch conferring a blessing. "Well, Joe, so you are returned, are
you? Come, now, let me shake hands with one of our brave heroes!"

What condescension! and his tone was the tone of a man reaching down from
a giddy height to the world beneath him.

"So you were in the thick of the fight, were you--dear me! what a charge
that was!" Ah, but, dear reader, you should see Prigg's charges!

"I wur someur about, sir," said Joe. "I dunnow where now though."

"Quite so," said Mr. Prigg, "it was a great victory; I'm told the enemy
ran away directly they heard our troops were coming."

"Now look at that," said Joe; "what a lot of lies do get about sure-ly!"

"Dear me!" said Mr. Prigg; "but you beat them, did you not? we won the
battle?"

"That's right enough," said Joe; "but if they'd run away we couldn't a
beat un--'tain't much of a fight when there's no enemy."

"Haw, haw, haw!" laughed Bumpkin. "That be good, Mr. Prigg, that be
good!"

"Very good, very good, indeed," said Mr. Prigg; "I don't wonder at your
winning if you could make such sallies as that."

And that was good for Mr. Prigg.

"And now," said he, "to business--business, eh?"

"We be jist gwine to 'ave a nice piece o' pork and greens, Mr. Prigg,
would ee please to tak some," said Mr. Bumpkin.

"Dear me!" answered Prigg; "how very strange, my favourite dish--if ever
Mrs. Prigg is in doubt about--"

"It be wery plain," said Bumpkin.

"The plainer the better, my dear sir; as I always say to my servants, if
you--"

"I'm sure," said Mrs. Bumpkin; "I be 'ardly fit to wait on a gennleman
like you. I ain't 'ad time this morning to change my gown and tidy up
myself."

"Really, my dear madam--don't, now; I adjure you; make no apologies--it
is not the dress--or the--or the --, anything in fact, that makes us what
we are;-