I'm a-going to leave the Dragon, sir.' 'Going to leave the Dragon!' cried Mr Pinch, looking at him with great astonishment.

'Why, Mark, you take my breath away!' 'Yes, sir,' he rejoined, looking straight before him and a long way off, as men do sometimes when they cogitate profoundly.

'What's the use of my stopping at the Dragon?
It an't at all the sort of place for ME.

When I left London (I'm a Kentish man by birth, though), and took that situation here, I quite made up my mind that it was the dullest little out-of-the-way corner in England, and that there would be some credit in being jolly under such circumstances.

But, Lord, there's no dullness at the Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, comic songs, choruses, company round the chimney corner every winter's evening.