One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
was down to visit t’ other gentleman’s big new edifice in
workmen’s hands, had a mother, who had been cook to a family,
and was now widow of a cook’s shop; ham, beef, and sausages,
prime pies to order; and a good specimen herself; and if
ever her son saw her spirit at his bedside, there wouldn’t be
room for much else in that chamber—supposing us to keep
our shapes. But he was the right sort of son, anxious to push
his mother’s shop where he saw a chance, and do it cheap; and
those foreign pigs, after a disappointment to their importer,
might be had pretty cheap, and were accounted tasty.
Skepsey’s main thought was upon war: the man had discoursed
of pigs.
He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar,
that pigs had been the cause of more bloody battles than any
other animal.
How so? the pork-butcher asked, and said he was not much
of a scholar, and pigs might be provoking, but he had not
heard they were a cause of strife between man and man. For
possession of them, Skepsey explained. Oh! possession! Why,
we’ve heard of bloody battles for the possession of women!
Men will fight for almost anything they care to get or call
their own, the pork-butcher said; and he praised Old England
for avoiding war. Skepsey nodded. How if war is forced
on us? Then we fight. Suppose we are not prepared?—We
soon get that up. Skepsey requested him to state the degree
of resistance he might think he could bring against a pair of
skilful fists, in a place out of hearing of the police.
‘Say, you!’ said the pork-butcher, and sharply smiled, for
he was a man of size.
‘I would give you two minutes,’ rejoined Skepsey, eyeing
him intently and kindly: insomuch that it could be seen he
was not in the conundrum vein.
‘Rather short allowance, eh, master?’ said the bigger man.
‘Feel here’; he straightened out his arm and doubled it, raising
a proud bridge of muscle.
Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle.
‘Twice that, would not help without the science,’ he remarked,
and let his arm be gripped in turn.
The pork-butcher’s throat sounded, as it were, commas
and colons, punctuations in his reflections, while he tightened
fingers along the iron lump. ‘Stringy. You’re a wiry one,
no mistake.’ It was encomium. With the ingrained contempt
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