“I am Mr Kavanagh,” he replied.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the man, touching his hat, as he recognised him.
It was not very far that he took the cab, only across to Holywell Street, where he stopped at an old clothes shop, and dismissed the astonished cabby, after having carried all the luggage inside, a young man with a hooked nose helping him quite as a matter of course.
“Now, then,” said Kavanagh, “what are you going to give me for all these things, clothes, uniform, portmanteaus, cases, and all. Of course they will go dirt cheap, but don’t overdo it, or I shall call a cab and go on to the next establishment. I don’t mind the trouble of packing up again.”
“Theresh no one in the street gives so good a prish as me,” said the man, turning over the different articles, and beginning to depreciate them. There was no sale for uniforms; those shirts were thin in the back; that coat was too big for most customers, and so forth. Kavanagh cut him short—
“I don’t want to know all that; come to the point, and say what you will give for the lot.”
“What do you ask?” counter-responded the Jew.
“Twenty pounds; and that’s an alarming sacrifice.”
“Twenty pounds! Did any one ever hear the like! Twenty pounds for old clothes!”
“Why, you would sell the portmanteaus and tin cases alone for ten, and that overcoat for three.”