Chapter 22

Joey

Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in
her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted
their fortunate papa. The reason they do this is because every
offer refused by their mother means another pantomime to them.
You see you can't trust to your father's taking you to the
pantomime, but you can trust to every one of the poor frenzied
gentlemen for whom that lady has wept a delicious little tear on
her lovely little cambric handkerchief. It is pretty (but
dreadfully affecting) to see them on Boxing Night gathering
together the babies of their old loves. Some knock at but one
door and bring a hansom, but others go from street to street in
private 'buses, and even wear false noses to conceal the
sufferings you inflict upon them as you grew more and more like
your sweet cruel mamma.

So I took David to the pantomime, and I hope you follow my
reasoning, for I don't. He went with the fairest anticipations,
pausing on the threshold to peer through the hole in the little
house called "Pay Here," which he thought was Red Riding Hood's
residence, and asked politely whether he might see her, but they
said she had gone to the wood, and it was quite true, for there
she was in the wood gathering a stick for her grandmother's fire.
She sang a beautiful song about the Boys and their dashing ways,
which flattered David considerably, but she forgot to take away
the stick after all. Other parts of the play were not so nice,
but David thought it all lovely, he really did.

Yet he left the place in tears. All the way home he sobbed in
the darkest corner of the growler, and if I tried to comfort him
he struck me.

The clown had done it, that man of whom he expected things so
fair. He had asked in a loud voice of the middling funny
gentleman (then in the middle of a song) whether he thought Joey
would be long in coming, and when at last Joey did come he
screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" and went into convulsions of
mirth.

Joey and his father were shadowing a pork-butcher's shop,
pocketing the sausages for which their family has such a fatal
weakness, and so when the butcher engaged Joey as his assistant
there was soon not a sausage left. However, this did not matter,
for there was a box rather like an ice-cream machine, and you put
chunks of pork in at one end and turned a handle and they came
out as sausages at the other end. Joey quite enjoyed doing this,
and you could see that the sausages were excellent by the way he
licked his fingers after touching them, but soon there were no
more pieces of pork, and just then a dear little Irish
terrier-dog came trotting down the street, so what did Joey do
but pop