Читать книгу The Pedestrian's Guide through North Wales. A tour performed in 1837 онлайн

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“I beg your pardon, Mr. Boxer,” said he, touching me on the shoulder, “but are you a politician?”

“Why, to say the truth, sir,” I replied, “I interfere as little as possible with what, I conceive, wiser heads than mine are greatly puzzled.”

“Why that’s true, sure enough,” continued he, “but may be you’ve heard of the—holloa!”

Here he was interrupted by his bulky companion, whom a lurch of the coach had flung heavily upon him as he was leaning forward to reach my ear. The Scotchman had fallen asleep, and effectually prevented his neighbour from regaining his sitting posture, by the weight of his body and its envelopes.

“Blood an’ ’ounds, man, what are ye about?” roared my friend in the thin inexpressibles. “Sure I might as well be porter to Atlas himself, and carry his load. Will you get up, if you please? By the shade of O’Donahue, but I’ll create a connexion betwixt your nose and the lighted end of my cigar, if you don’t let me up.”

A sonorous grunt, which drowned the rattle of the coach wheels, was the only reply to this appeal, and Paddy being unacquainted with the language, immediately put his threat into execution. I have said before it was a cold night, and Sandy, who naturally enough started, at the application of the cigar to his proboscis, from his ideal world to a dreamy consciousness of his real situation, placing his hand on the injured part, exclaimed, still half bewildered, “Eh! that’s vera true, indeed. It’s a cauld night, and I verily believe that my nose is frost-bitten. I maun pit t’other shawl round it;” saying which he dragged one from his pocket, and was completely enveloped, apparently to suffocation.