Then his greeting was cordial
enough, and I went down into the dining-room to join the family at tea.
"We are humble here," he said, "not given to the flesh, and you must take
us for what we are, in our humble way."
The girls were flushed and embarrassed at greeting me, while he did not
make it any the easier for them.
"Ha! ha!" he roared heartily, slapping the table with his open hand till
the dishes rang. "The girls thought yesterday you had come to ask for a
piece of bread! Ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!"
This they indignantly denied, with snapping eyes and guilty red cheeks,
as though it were an essential of true refinement to be able to discern
under his rags a man who had no need to go ragged.
And then, while I ate bread and marmalade, proceeded a play at cross
purposes, the daughters deeming it an insult to me that I should have
been mistaken for a beggar, and the father considering it as the highest
compliment to my cleverness to succeed in being so mistaken. All of
which I enjoyed, and the bread, the marmalade, and the tea, till the time
came for Johnny Upright to find me a lodging, which he did, not half-a-
dozen doors away, in his own respectable and opulent street, in a house
as like to his own as a pea to its mate.
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