Works of Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens [7175]
"I wish you would come and look at him," said Mr. Traveller, clapping the Tinker on the shoulder.
"Not I, sir," he rejoined. "I ain't a going to flatter him up by looking at him!"
"But he is asleep."
"Are you sure he is asleep?" asked the Tinker, with an unwilling air, as he shouldered his wallet.
"Sure."
"Then I'll look at him for a quarter of a minute," said the Tinker, "since you so much wish it; but not a moment longer."
They all three went back across the road; and, through the barred window, by the dying glow of the sunset coming in at the gate--which the child held open for its admission--he could be pretty clearly discerned lying on his bed.
"You see him?" asked Mr. Traveller.
"Yes," returned the Tinker, "and he's worse than I thought him."
Mr. Traveller then whispered in few words what he had done since morning; and asked the Tinker what he thought of that?
"I think," returned the Tinker, as he turned from the window, "that you've wasted a day on him."
"I think so too; though not, I hope, upon myself. Do you happen to be going anywhere near the Peal of Bells?"
"That's my direct way, sir," said the Tinker.
"I invite you to supper there. And as I learn from this young lady that she goes some three-quarters of a mile in the same direction, we will drop her on the road, and we will spare time to keep her company at her garden gate until her own Bella comes home."
So, Mr. Traveller, and the child, and the Tinker, went along very amicably in the sweet-scented evening; and the moral with which the Tinker dismissed the subject was, that he said in his trade that metal that rotted for want of use, had better be left to rot, and couldn't rot too soon, considering how much true metal rotted from over-use and hard service.
FOOTNOTES
{1} Dickens didn't write chapters 2 to 5 and they are omitted in this edition.
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The Uncommercial Traveller
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CHAPTER I--HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS
Allow me to introduce myself--first negatively.
No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn't want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.
And yet--proceeding now, to introduce myself positively--I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London--now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads--seeing