“Heaven knows,” said Steerforth. “Not a bore, I hope? I thought he looked a little like one.”
“Traddles!” I replied, triumphantly.
“Who’s he?” asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
“Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?”
“Oh! That fellow!” said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top of the fire, with the poker. “Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?”
I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so forth.
“Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!” he exclaimed, starting out of his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. “I shall do it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.”
“I thought you came from Oxford?” I returned.
“Not I,” said Steerforth. “I have been seafaring—better employed.”
“Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,” I remarked, “and I understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he certainly did not say so.”