"It's no use argufying the pint; what I've said, I'll stand to. Come, Tom—drat the boy! why don't you come?" and so saying, the choleric dame, catching fast hold of her son by the pinafore, flounced out of the room, banging the door after her with the emphasis of a hurricane.
Dick remained a few minutes behind, in the hope that breakfast might yet be forthcoming: but finding that there was not the slightest prospect of his landlady's relenting, he, in the true spirit of an indignant Briton, consigned her "eyes" to perdition; and, having thus expectorated his wrath, began to furbish up his faded apparel. He tucked in his saffron shirt-collar; buttoned up his coat to the chin, refreshing the white seams with the "Patent Reviver;" smoothed round his silk hat, which luckily was in good preservation; and then rushed out of the house with the desperate determination of breakfasting at some one's expense. There is nothing like the gastric juice to stimulate a man's ingenuity. It is the secret of half the poetic inspiration in our literature.
Chance—or perhaps that ruling destiny which, do what we will, still sways all our actions—led Dick's steps in the direction of the Hampstead Road. It was a bright, cool, summer morning; the housemaids were at work with their brooms outside the cottages; the milkman was going his rounds with his "sky-blue;" and the shiny porter-pots yet hung upon the garden rails. As our hero moved onward, keeping his mouth close shut, lest the lively wind might act too excitingly on his unfurnished epigastrum, his attentive optics chanced to fall on a cottage, in the front parlour of which, the window being open, he beheld a sight that roused all the shark or alderman within him,—to wit, a breakfast set forth in a style that might have created an appetite "under the ribs of death." Dick stopped: the case was desperate; but his self-possession was equal to the emergency. "A Mr. Smith lives here," said he, running his eye hastily over the premises: "the bower, and the wooden god, those trees so neatly clipped, and that commonplace-looking terrier sleeping at the gate, with his nose poked through the rails, all betoken the habits and fancies of a Smith. Good! I will favour the gentleman with a call;" and with these words Dick gave a vehement pull at the garden-bell.
"Is Mr. Smith at home?" he inquired with an air of easy assurance that produced an instant effect on the girl who answered the bell.
"No, sir."
"Upon my life, that's very awkward; particularly so as he requested me to be——"
"Oh! I suppose, then, you're the gentleman that was expected here to breakfast this morning?"
"The very same, my dear."
"Well," continued the girl, unlocking the gate, "master desired me to say that you were to walk in, and not wait for him, for he had to go into Tottenham-court Road on business, and should not be back for an hour."
Dick took the hint, walked in, and in an instant was hard at work.