Strona:Jerome K. Jerome - Trzej ludzie w jednej łodzi.djvu/44

smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody‘s toes.
 Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he‘d let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.
 „Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over every thing“, Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. „Why, I like doing a little job of this sort.“
 And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.
 Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up — very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched — except Uncle Podger.
 „There you are,“ he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman‘s corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. „Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!“
 Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told him so. I said