ttle circle
of his own.

'But, Mr. Jennings,' said Nicholas Tulrumble, 'he'll be suffocated.'

'I'm very sorry for it, sir,' replied Mr. Jennings; 'but nobody can get
that armour off, without his own assistance. I'm quite certain of it
from the way he put it on.'

Here Ned wept dolefully, and shook his helmeted head, in a manner that
might have touched a heart of stone; but the crowd had not hearts of
stone, and they laughed heartily.

'Dear me, Mr. Jennings,' said Nicholas, turning pale at the possibility
of Ned's being smothered in his antique costume--'Dear me, Mr. Jennings,
can nothing be done with him?'

'Nothing at all,' replied Ned, 'nothing at all. Gentlemen, I'm an
unhappy wretch. I'm a body, gentlemen, in a brass coffin.' At this
poetical idea of his own conjuring up, Ned cried so much that the people
began to get sympathetic, and to ask what Nicholas Tulrumble meant by
putting a man into such a machine as that; and one individual in a hairy
waistcoat like the top of a trunk, who had previously expressed his
opinion that if Ned hadn't been a poor man, Nicholas wouldn't have dared
do it, hinted at the propriety of breaking the four-wheel chaise, or
Nicholas's head, or both, which last compound proposition the crowd
seemed to consider a very good notion.

It was not acted upon, however, for it had hardly been broached, when Ned
Twigger's wife made her appearance abruptly in the little circle before
noticed, and Ned no sooner caught a glimpse of her face and form, than
from the mere force of habit he set off towards his home just as fast as
his legs could carry him; and that was not very quick in the present
instance either, for, however ready they might have been to carry _him_,
they couldn't get on very well under the brass armour. So, Mrs. Twigger
had plenty of time to denounce Nicholas Tulrumble to his face: to express
her opinion that he was a decided monster; and to intimate that, if her
ill-used husband sustained any personal damage from the brass armour, she
would have the law of Nicholas Tulrumble for manslaughter. When she had
said all this with due vehemence, she posted after Ned, who was dragging
himself along as best he could, and deploring his unhappiness in most
dismal tones.

What a wailing and screaming Ned's children raised when he got home at
last! Mrs. Twigger tried to undo the armour, first in one place, and
then in another, but she couldn't manage it; so she tumbled Ned into b