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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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940 The result of his cogitations appeared to be unfavourable, for he folded the garment once more, laid it aside, and mounted on a chair to get down another, chirping while he did so: Young, loving, and fair, Oh what happiness there! The wedding is sure to be lucky! ‘They always put in “young,”’ said old Arthur, ‘but songs are only written for the sake of rhyme, and this is a silly one that the poor country-people sang, when I was a little boy. Though stop-- young is quite right too--it means the bride--yes. He, he, he! It means the bride. Oh dear, that’s good. That’s very good. And true besides, quite true!’ In the satisfaction of this discovery, he went over the verse again, with increased expression, and a shake or two here and there. He then resumed his employment. ‘The bottle-green,’ said old Arthur; ‘the bottle-green was a famous suit to wear, and I bought it very cheap at a pawnbroker’s, and there was--he, he, he!--a tarnished shilling in the waistcoat pocket. To think that the pawnbroker shouldn’t have known there was a shilling in it! I knew it! I felt it when I was examining the quality. Oh, what a dull dog of a pawnbroker! It was a lucky suit too, this bottle-green. The very day I put it on first, old Lord Mallowford was burnt to death in his bed, and all the post-obits fell in. I’ll be married in the bottle-green. Peg. Peg Sliderskew--I’ll wear the bottle-green!’ This call, loudly repeated twice or thrice at the room-door, brought into the apartment a short, thin, weasen, blear-eyed old |
