“Well!” said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. “How are you, and what can I do for you?”
Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three featherbeds, and was slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.
“ Mr. Trabb,” said I, “it’s an unpleasant thing to have to mention, because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome property.”
A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, exclaiming, “Lord bless my soul!”
“I am going up to my guardian in London,” said I, casually drawing some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; “and I want a fashionable suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them,” I added—otherwise I thought he might only pretend to make them, “with ready money.”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside of each elbow, “don’t hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate you? Would you do me the favor of stepping into the shop?”
Mr. Trabb’s boy was the most audacious boy in all that countryside. When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his labors by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead.