He had seated himself upon a stage chair, gilt and anciently splendid, to deliver himself of this fine harangue. The lady Sarah, in her turn, hastened to take up a commanding position upon the throne that had served for a very modern Cleopatra, while the boy "Betty," accustomed to hard beds, squatted upon the bare boards and was the happier for his liberty. For inward satisfaction, the menu declared a monstrous pie from a shop near by; a plentiful supply of fried fish; three dozen oysters in a puny barrel, and a half a dozen bottles of stout, three of which protruded from the Archbishop's capacious pockets. The occasion was a great one, indeed, the memory of their old friend, the Panorama, at its zenith.
"I always did say as he'd make a noise in the world, and that's the truth, God knows," Sarah took an early occasion to remark. "Not if he were my own brother could I wish him more than I do this night. 'Tisn't all of us would care to go 'crost the ocean among the cannibals and take the King of Hingerland in a 'amper. I saw him myself, wrapped up in a piper box and lookin' beautiful, God's truth, with the crown done up in tissue beside him. That was before the Panorama left us. 'Be a good boy,' says I, 'and don't fall in love with any of them darkies as you'll find in' Mericky. So help me lucky, I'd a good mind ter come after you,' says I, 'and marry their Ole Man jess ter set 'em a good example.'"
By which it will be perceived that the Lady Sarah's knowledge of the great and mighty Republic beyond the seas was clearly limited. Such ignorance had often provoked the Archbishop of Bloomsbury to exasperation, it annoyed him not a little to-night.
"My dear child," he protested, "you are laboring under a very great delusion. Be assured that America is a very great country, where--er--hem--they may eat each other, but not as you imagine. I believe that the American ladies are very beautiful. I have met some of them--er--in the old days, when--hem--the Bishops showed their confidence in me by drinking my claret and finding it to their liking. All that we have in England they have in America--prisons, paupers, policemen, palaces. You are thinking of Africa, Sarah, darkest Africa, that used to be, but is fast disappearing. Led me add--"
Sarah, however, was already busy upon her dozen of oysters and had no patience to hear the good man out.
"Don't you take on so, Bishop," she intervened, "'Mericky ain't done much for me and precious little it's going ter do for you. What I says is, let those as have got a good 'ome stop there and be thankful. Yer may talk about your oshun wave, but I ain't taking any, no, not though there was diamonds on the sea beach the other side and 'ot-'arse roses fer nothink. Who ever sees their ole friends as is swallered up by the sea? Who ever heard of Alb Kennedy since he went ter Berling as he told us for to mike his fortune? Ho, a life on the oshun wave if yer like, but not for them as has bread and cheese ashore and a good bed to go to arterwards; that's what I shall say as long as I've breath in my body."