In anticipation of a visit from Mr Toots and the Game
Chicken, Mr Headstone ordered in a dozen crumpets, threw an extra lump of coal
upon the fire, and instructed his landlady to admit his visitors without delay
lest the glory that they trailed behind them should become dissipated in the
gloom. It was, indeed, cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy withal, and the
pedagogue could hear the people in the street below go wheezing up and down,
beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it
was quite dark already – it had not been light all day – and candles were
flaring in the windows, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.
Mrs Raddle was herself setting a lighted candle in the
scullery window when, piercing the murky atmosphere on the other side of the
glass, there appeared an apparition in white with a physiognomy so grotesque that
it would have induced a lady of a delicate constitution to faint away upon the
spot. As Mrs Raddle had never once in her life required the reviving properties
of hartshorn, she acknowledged the presence of the stranger with equanimity
and, putting her own head out of the window in the manner of a gargoyle atop a
church tower, enquired whether he had come to see Mr Bradley Headstone. The
answer being in the affirmative, the individual – whose shaggy great-coat and
flat-brimmed hat now identified him as the Game Chicken – was admitted into the
parlour, closely followed by Mr Toots and Diogenes.
Mr Headstone’s gratification on receiving his visitors was
tempered by the appearance of the Chicken, which did not entirely meet with his
expectations of the profile of a victor in the fine and noble art. The
Chicken’s visage was, indeed, in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be
hardly presentable in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken
himself attributed this punishment to his having had the misfortune to get into
Chancery early in the proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by the Larkey
one, and heavily grassed.
Mr Headstone, who was unfamiliar with the lexicon of
pugilism, appealed to Mr Toots for a gloss upon the Chicken’s description,
whereupon that gentleman produced from his waistcoat pocket a gazette, which
contained a full and faithful account of the fight. It appeared from the
published record of that great contest that the Larkey Boy had had it all his
own way from the beginning, and that the Chicken had been ‘tapped’, and ‘bunged’,
and had ‘received pepper’, and had been made groggy, and had ‘come up piping’,
and had endured a complication of similar strange inconveniences, until he had
been gone into and finished.
It was the opinion of Mr Toots that the Game Chicken’s
defeat at the hands of the Larkey Boy was of no consequence, and that his upcoming
bout with the Westminster Costermonger would be sure to garland him with glory;
which sentiment received the approbation of Mr Headstone as he handed round the
hot-buttered crumpets.
