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Henry Mayhew
The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family at the Great Exhibition
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But to make the request was to open afresh the vials of Mrs. Sandboys’ wrath; for she gave him plainly to understand that, coal-less as they were below, Postlethwaite had been obliged to fell some of the trees, and that the holly was so green that she had been forced to burn every newspaper in the house in her struggles to make a fire. Indeed, were it not that they had mustered all hands, and taken turn and turn about at the bellows, every fifteen minutes, all the day through, the family would not have been able to have had a mouthful of anything warm to eat; and now that the last double Times had gone, she had left Postlethwaite and Ann and Elcy and poor Jobby seated round a fireless grate, in the circular drawing-room, partaking of oatmeal mixed in cold water by way of tea.
Bitterly conscious of his deficiency as regarded pantaloons, and feeling acutely the privation as well as the destruction of his newspapers, the otherwise benevolent soul of Sandboys reverted for a moment into the primitive selfishness of savage life; and, seeing no other sorrows but his own, he angrily glared on Mrs. Sandboys, and burst out, “How dar’sta, Aggy, burn t’ papers?”
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