This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he would have to wait till doomsday.
“But you shall have some breakfast!” said I, with my hand on the bell-rope, “and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven, that I have got here.”
“No, no!” said Steerforth. “Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.”
“But you’ll come back to dinner?” said I.
“I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow morning.”
“Then bring them here to dinner,” I returned. “Do you think they would come?”
“Oh! they would come fast enough,” said Steerforth; “but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.”
I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little housewarming, and that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.
When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly