She swings back the door, and there,
bespattered with mud, face bleeding and distorted, and eyes glassy,
stands the chivalrous M'Carstrow. He presents a sorry picture;
mutters, or half growls, some sharp imprecations; makes a grasp at
the girl, falls prostrate on the floor. Attempting to gain his
perpendicular, he staggers a few yards-the girl screaming with
fright-and groans as his face again confronts the tiles. To make the
matter still worse, three of his boon companions follow him, and,
almost in succession, pay their penance to the floor, in an
indescribable catacomb.
"I tell you what, Colonel! if that nigger gal a' yourn don't stand
close with her blazer we'll get into an all-fired snarl," says one,
endeavouring to extricate himself and regain his upright. After
sundry ineffectual attempts, surging round the room in search of his
hat, which is being very unceremoniously transformed into a muff
beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying,
"There's something very strange about the floor of this
establishment,--it don't seem solid; 'pears how there's ups and downs
in it." They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring
their knees out of "a fix"--to free themselves from the angles which
they are most unmathematically working on the floor. Working and
twisting,--now staggering, and again giving utterance to the coarsest
language,--one of the gentry--they belong to the sporting world-calls
loudly for the colonel's little 'oman.
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