CHAPTER XLII.
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE CONVIVIAL SENTIMENT, THAT THE BEST OF FRIENDS MUST SOMETIMES PART.
The pavement of Snow Hill had been baking and frying all day in the heat, and the twain Saracens' heads guarding the entrance to the hostelry of whose name and sign they are the duplicate presentments, looked—or seemed in the eyes of jaded and foot-sore passers by, to look—more vicious than usual, after blistering and scorching in the sun, when, in one of the inn's smallest sitting-rooms, through whose open window there rose, in a palpable steam, wholesome exhalations from reeking coach-horses, the usual furniture of a tea-table was displayed in neat and inviting order, flanked by large joints of roast and boiled, a tongue, a pigeon-pie, a cold fowl, a tankard of ale, and other little matters of the like kind, which, in degenerate towns and cities are generally understood to belong more particularly to solid lunches, stage-coach dinners, or unusually substantial breakfasts.
Mr. John Browdie, with his hands in his pockets, hovered restlessly about these delicacies, stopping occasionally to whisk the flies out of the sugar-basin with his wife's pocket-handkerchief, or to dip a tea-spoon in the milkpot and carry it to his mouth, or to cut off a little knob of crust, and a little corner of meat, and swallow them at two gulps like a couple of pills. After every one of these flirtations with the eatables, he pulled out his watch, and declared with an earnestness quite pathetic that he couldn't undertake to hold out two minutes longer.
"'Tilly!" said John to his lady, who was reclining half awake and half asleep upon a sofa.
"Well, John!"
"Weel, John!" retorted her husband, impatiently. "Dost thou feel hoongry, lass?"
"Not very," said Mrs. Browdie.
"Not vary!" repeated John, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "Hear her say not vary, and us dining at three, and loonching off pasthry thot aggravates a mon 'stead of pacifying him! Not vary!"
"Here's a gcn'lman for you, sir," said the waiter, looking in.
"A wa'at, for me?" cried John, as though he thought it "must be a letter, or a parcel.
"A gen'lman, sir."
"Stars and garthers, chap !" said John, "wa'at dost thou coom and say thot for. In wi' 'un."
"Are you at home, sir?"
"At whoam !" cried John, "I wish I wur; I'd ha tea'd two hour ago. Why, I told t'oother chap to look sharp ootside door, and tell 'un d'rectly he coom, thot we war faint wi’ hoonger. In wi' 'un. Aha! Thee hond, Misther Nickleby. This is nigh to be the proodest day o’ my life, sir. Hoo be all wi' ye? Ding! ,But, I'm glod o' this!"
Quite forgetting even his hunger in the heartiness of his salutation,
