“Well, sir, that would be a stretch o’ fancy that would strain me a’most to the bustin’ p’int. Coffee, if you please. Oh yes, sugar an’ milk in course. I never let slip a chance as I knows on. W’ich bread? well, ’ot rolls is temptin’, but I allers ’ad a weakness for sappy things, so ’ot buttered toast—if you can spare it.”
“Spare it, my good man!” said Charlie, laughing. “There’s a whole loaf in the kitchen and pounds of butter when you’ve finished this, not to mention the shops round the corner.”
It was a more gratifying treat to Charlie than he had expected, to see this poor man eat to his heart’s content of viands which he so thoroughly appreciated and so rarely enjoyed. What Zook himself felt, it is impossible for well-to-do folk to conceive, or an ordinary pen to describe; but, as he sat there, opposite to his big friend and champion, stowing away the good things with zest and devotion of purpose, it was easy to believe that his watery eyes were charged with the tears of gratitude, as well as with those of a chronic cold to which he was subject.
Breakfast over, they started off in quest of the old woman with teetotal proclivities.
“How did you come to know her?” asked Charlie, as they went along.
“Through a ’ouse in the city as I was connected with afore I got run over an’ lamed. They used to send me with parcels to this old ’ooman. In course I didn’t know for sartin’ w’at was in the parcels, but ’avin’ a nose, you see, an’ bein’ able to smell, I guessed that it was a compound o’ wittles an’ wursted work.”
“A strange compound, Zook.”
“Well, they wasn’t ’zactly compounded—they was sometimes the one an’ sometimes the other; never mixed to my knowledge.”
“What house was it that sent you?”
“Withers and Company.”