Chapter 42

CHAPTER 42

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 footsore 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
teaspoon in the milk-pot 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!'

'Well, 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 gen'l'man 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'l'man, 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