The Club of Queer Trades
night of the week they would sit up all night drinking rum-punch. "Not just now, thank you."
"Nothing else I can get for you?" I said, feeling genuinely sorry for the well-mannered old donkey. "A cup of tea?"
I saw a struggle in his eye and I conquered. When the cup of tea came he drank it like a dipsomaniac gulping brandy. Then he fell back, and said:
"I have had such a time, Mr. Swinburne. I am not used to these excitements. As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex"—he threw this in with an indescribable airiness of vanity—"I have never known such things happen."
"What things happen?" I asked.
He straightened himself with sudden dignity.
"As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex," he said, "I have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman, and made to take part in a crime in the character of an old woman. Never once. My experience may be small. It may be insufficient. But it has never occurred to me before."
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