Volume One—Chapter Seventeen.
“Nothing like Leather.”
The very morning upon which waiter Charles of the County Arms, Somesham, spoke so disparagingly of Septimus Hardon’s boots, the maker, or rather re-maker, of the said boots sat, as soon as it was broad daylight—not an extremely early hour in his home—industriously plying his craft, till, after divers muttered anathemas, a voice growled:
“Confound it, Ike, I wish that old lapstone was at the bottom of the Thames. Who’s to sleep?”
“Get up, then,” said the lapstone-smiter slowly and heavily.
“Get up!” growled the voice, “get up!”
“What, in the middle of the night! Ain’t six yet, is it?”
“Just struck,” said the lapstone-man, following the example of the clock, and hammering vigorously at a scrap of leather about to be used in the repair of an old boot before him; while from sundry smothered growls coming from the room behind the shop where the shoemaker was at work, it was evident that the idler had buried a portion, if not the whole of his face, beneath the blankets, and again offered sacrifice to the sleepy god.