one to show the Turkey carpet, the pea-green
cornices, the bright mahogany slips of tables, the gay trellised
geranium-papered room, or the aristocratic visitors who frequent it, is
immaterial--the description is as accurate as if George Robins had drawn
it himself. In this room then, as the Yorkshireman and Green were lying
dozing on three chairs apiece, each having fallen asleep to avoid the
trouble of talking to the other, they were suddenly roused by loud yells
and hootings at the side door, and the bursting into the coffee-room of
what at first brush they thought must be a bull. The Yorkshireman jumped
up, rubbed his eyes, and lo! before him stood Mr. Jorrocks, puffing like
a stranded grampus, with a bunch of sea-weed under his arm and the
dress in which he had started, with the exception of the dark blue
stocking-net pantaloons, the place of which were supplied by a flowing
white linen kilt, commonly called a shirt, in the four corners of which
were knotted a few small pebbles--producing, with the Hessian boots and
one thing and another, the most laughable figure imaginable. The blood
of the Jorrockses was up, however, and throwing his hands in the air, he
thus delivered himself. "Oh gentlemen! gentlemen!--here's a lamentable
occurrence--a terrible disaster--oh dear! oh dear!--I never thought I
should come to this. You know, James Green," appealing to Jemmy, "that
I never was the man to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty; I have
always said that 'want of decency is want of sense,' and see how I
am rewarded! Oh dear! oh dear! that I should ever have trusted my
pantaloons out of my sight." While all this, which was the work of a
moment, was going forward, the mob, which had been shut out at the side
door on Jorrocks's entry, had got round to the coffee-room window,
and were all wedging their faces in to have a sight of him. It was
principally composed of children, who kept up the most discordant yells,
mingled with shouts of "there's old cutty shirt!"--"who's got your
breeches, old cock?"--"make a scramble!"--"turn him out for another
hunt!"--"turn him again!"--until, fearing for the respectability of his
house, the landlord persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to retire into the bar to
state his grievances. It then appeared that having travelled along the
coast, as far as the first preventive stationhouse on the Ramsgate side
of Margate, the grocer had thought it a convenient place for performing
his intended ablutions, and, ac