Shoemaker. Very strange, m'Lord. 'Tother one seems to fit you to a nicety. (Aside.) Fancied that might be a tight fit now.
Customer. Humph! I can make shift with that. But this won't do at all. Tight across the instep and pinches the toes awfully. (Aside.) Hang it! it's a beastly bad fit everyway; but that it wouldn't suit to me change just now, I'd throw the confounded things on his hands and go elsewhere.
Shoemaker (aside). He looks grumpy; I must mind my eye, or I shall lose his custom. And that wouldn't suit my books a bit—just now. (Aloud.) Awfully sorry, I'm sure, m'Lord. We must try again.
Customer. You ought to have got the measure of my foot better than this, especially when I handed you my old lasts.
Shoemaker. Well, m'Lord, you see, you've a bit—ahem!—outgrown 'em like, don't you see, m'Lord?
Customer. Outgrown them? What do you mean? Feet don't grow at my time of life.
Shoemaker (aside). How shall I put it so as not to huff him? Bunions are a growth; so are corns—of a kind. (Aloud.) Why, m'Lord, I think—I—a—fancy your last pair—Gladstone highlows they were—weren't they?—trying shoes for tender feet, m'Lord—must have been just a trifle too small, and—ahem!—compressed your feet a little, at the joints, m'Lord.
Customer (aside). By Jove, he's right. G.'s tight fits have galled me for some time past, and the last pair he made me I simply couldn't get on. (Aloud.) Hang it, man, what has that to do with it? Your business is to fit my feet as they are. If you can't do it——
Shoemaker (hastily). Can't, m'Lord? No such word in our shop, m'Lord. I flatter myself we could fit the biggest beetle-crusher ever bunion'd into the shape of a giant potato or a Californian nugget. Much more your shapely foot, m'Lord, which, if it has been nubblyfied a leetle by misfits, will soon recover its proper proportions—under proper treatment.
Customer. Well, off with this boot, anyhow. You'll have to make it longer and wider, ease it here and slacken it there, before I can wear it.