Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our
dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call me
"sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the
room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat,--as if it were
only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could find a
resting place,--and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the
chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.
"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always
presided of a morning.
"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take whichever
is most agreeable to yourself."
"What do you say to coffee?"
"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run contrairy
to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a little 'eating?"
"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it out.
Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his
chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it
were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off again
soon.
"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?"
"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe, after coughing behind his hand,
as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he came. "No
it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday afternoon" (with an
appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict impartiality).
"Have you seen anything of London yet?"
"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and Wopsle went off straight to look at
the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come up to its likeness
in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay," added Joe, in
an explanatory manner, "as it is there drawd too architectooralooral."
I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily expressive
to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a perfect Chorus, but
for his attention being providentially attracted by his hat, which
was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention, and a
quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by wicket-keeping.
He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the greatest skill; now,
rushing at it and catching it neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping
it midway, beating it up, and humoring it in various parts of the room
and against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall,
before he felt it safe to close with it; finally splashing it into the
slop-basin, where I took the liberty of laying hands upon it.