Casting a sharp glance around, he saw making towards him, a man of the cadaverous aspect, one who was an entire stranger to substantial creature comforts, or, if not, one who “shamed his pasture” considerably.
On closer scrutiny, Twm saw it was his old friend Moses, whose hungry stomach had kept him hopelessly poor. Moses advanced and tried to bargain for a few yards of his flannel; but on reckoning his money found he could not come up to the price, as he said he had to buy a three legged iron pot, in addition to a winter petticoat for his wife: “and,” observed the man of tatters, with a grin of miserable mirth, “it will be better for her to go without flannel than our whole family to want a porridge pot.”
Twm liked Moses, but not his logic; which implied a want of courtesy and due deference to his better half, whose indisputable right to warm petticoats claimed precedence to all the pots, pans, and every earthly consideration.
“Here take this bale, take it all, for I have lost my yard and scissors, and pay me when you grow rich;—confound your thanks! away with you, bestow it safe, then return here; perhaps I may get thee an iron pot at as cheap a rate as the flannel.”
Moses did not want twice bidding to induce him to avail himself of his good fortune, but entering into the spirit of the scene at once, appeared to understand our hero’s joking propensities, although he had no suspicion that it was the veritable Twm himself. Off Moses ran with his enormous present, and immediately returned; when our hero accompanied him to the shop of an old curmudgeon of an ironmonger, whose face, hardly distinguishable behind his habitual screen of snuff and spectacles, seemed of the same material as his own hardware.
The man of rags was quite in luck, and as instructed, followed his benefactor into the shop in silence. Twm examined the culinary ware, with all the caution of an old farm-wife, asking the prices of various articles, and turned up the whites of his eyes in the most approved puritanic fashion, expressive of astonishment at such excessive charges. Old hammerhead repelled the insinuation, and swore that cheaper or better pots were never seen in the kitchen of a king. “Then you must mean the king of the beggars,” quoth Twm, “for you have nothing here but damaged ware.”
“Damaged devil! what do you mean?” roared the enraged ironmonger. “I mean,” replied Twm Shon Catty, with provoking equanimity, “that there is scarcely a pot here without a hole in it; now this which I hold in my hand for instance, has one.” “Where! where!” asked the fiery old shop keeper, holding it up between his eyes and the light: “if there is a hole in this pot, I’ll eat it: where is the hole that you speak of?” “Here!” bawls the inexorable hoaxer, pulling it over his ears, and holding it there, while Moses took the wink from his patron, and walked off with a most choice article, which he had selected from the whole lot.
Here was a predicament for a respectable old tradesman! Our hero fairly held his sides with laughter as the old curmudgeon sprawled about, vainly endeavouring to free himself from the pot, in which his terrible shouts for help were entirely lost. Having tied his hands behind his back, Twm left him howling and sweating beneath his huge extinguisher, and made as he took his departure, this consolatory speech—“Had there not been a hole in it how could that large stupid knob of yours have entered such a helmet?”
Twm left the enraged ironmonger to get out of his dilemma as best he could, having very little sympathy with him in his distress. When once more in the street, he found that the people were all moving in one direction, and Twm discovered shortly that there was some unusual attraction at the Town Hall. As the assemblage increased, the way, like a choaked mill-dam, became more and more impeded, until the whole restless mass was consolidated, and stood still perforce.
Our hero had forced his way till near the entrance of the hall, where he ventured to ask what cause had drawn together such a crowd; but he got no immediate answer, as many came there, like himself, drawn by the powerful influence of curiosity.