“Well,” said I, “they are confoundedly dear; but, as you will have a long time to wait for your money, why, I shall have my revenge you see.” The man looked alarmed, and began a speech: “Sare,—I cannot let dem go vidout”—but a bright thought struck me, and I interrupted—“Sir! don't sir me. Take off the boots, fellow, and, hark ye, when you speak to a nobleman, don't say—Sir.”
“A hundert tousand pardons, my lort,” says he: “if I had known you were a lort, I vood never have called you—Sir. Vat name shall I put down in my books?”
“Name?—oh! why, Lord Cornwallis, to be sure,” said I, as I walked off in the boots.
“And vat shall I do vid my lort's shoes?”
“Keep them until I send for them,” said I. And, giving him a patronizing bow, I walked out of the shop, as the German tied up my shoes in paper.
This story I would not have told, but that my whole life turned upon these accursed boots. I walked back to school as proud as a peacock, and easily succeeded in satisfying the boys as to the manner in which I came by my new ornaments.
Well, one fatal Monday morning—the blackest of all black-Mondays that ever I knew—as we were all of us playing between school-hours, I saw a posse of boys round a stranger, who seemed to be looking out for one of us. A sudden trembling seized me—I knew it was Stiffelkind. What had brought him here? He talked loud, and seemed angry. So I rushed into the school-room, and burying my head between my hands, began reading for dear life.
“I vant Lort Cornvallis,” said the horrid bootmaker. “His lortship belongs, I know, to dis honorable school, for I saw him vid de boys at chorch yesterday.”
“Lord who?”