"How can I help pushing ye when the folk behind
push me?" said Coggan, in a deprecating tone, turning
without turning his body, which was jammed as in a vice.
There was a silence; then the drums and trumpets
again sent forth their echoing notes. The crowd was
again ecstasied, and gave another lurch in which Coggan
and Poorgrass were again thrust by those behind upon
the women in front.
"O that helpless feymels should be at the mercy of
she swayed like a reed shaken by the wind.
Now." said Coggan, appealing in an earnest voice
to the public at large as it stood clustered about his
shoulder-blades. "Did ye ever hear such onreasonable
woman as that? Upon my carcase, neighbours, if I
could only get out of this cheesewring, the damn women
might eat the show for me!"
"Don't ye lose yer temper, Jan!" implored Joseph
Poorgrass, in a whisper." They might get their men to
murder us, for I think by the shine of their eyes that
they be a sinful form of womankind."
Jan held his tongue, as if he had no objection to be
pacified to please a friend, and they gradually reached
the foot of the ladder, Poorgrass being flattened like a
jumping-jack, and the sixpence, for admission, which he
had got ready half-an-hour earlier, having become so
reeking hot in the tight squeeze of his excited hand that
the woman in spangles, brazen rings set with glass
diamonds, and with chalked face and shoulders, who
took the money of him, hastily dropped it again from
a fear that some trick had been played to burn her
fingers.
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