You're really worse
than the dripping of a hundred water-butts outside the window, or the
scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot. I can't bear it. Do go
to bed, Miggs. To oblige me--do.'
'You haven't got nothing to untie, sir,' returned Miss Miggs, 'and
therefore your requests does not surprise me. But missis has--and
while you sit up, mim'--she added, turning to the locksmith's wife,
'I couldn't, no, not if twenty times the quantity of cold water was
aperiently running down my back at this moment, go to bed with a quiet
spirit.'
Having spoken these words, Miss Miggs made divers efforts to rub her
shoulders in an impossible place, and shivered from head to foot;
thereby giving the beholders to understand that the imaginary cascade
was still in full flow, but that a sense of duty upheld her under that
and all other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance.
Mrs Varden being too sleepy to speak, and Miss Miggs having, as the
phrase is, said her say, the locksmith had nothing for it but to sigh
and be as quiet as he could.
But to be quiet with such a basilisk before him was impossible. If he
looked another way, it was worse to feel that she was rubbing her
cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye, or making all kinds of
extraordinary shapes with her nose, than to see her do it.
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