“I am very well,” said I; “and not at all Bacchanalian to-night, though I confess to another party of three.”
“All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,” returned Steerforth. “Who’s our friend in the tights?”
I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must know him.
“But who do you suppose our other friend is?” said I, in my turn.
“Heaven knows,” said Steerforth. “Not a bore, I hope? I thought he looked a little like one.”
“Traddles!” I replied, triumphantly.
“Who’s he?” asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
“Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?”
“Oh! That fellow!” said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top of the fire, with the poker. “Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?”
I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light