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Updated: June 23, 2025
"Your card says, 'the shortest notice," rejoined Mr Handycock, with the confidence and authority of a man who is enabled to correct another by his own assertions. "If you do not choose to undertake the work, another will." This silenced the man, who made his promise, took my measure, and departed; and soon afterwards Mr Handycock also quitted the house.
"Yes, my dear," replied the lady; "I thought that you were washing your hands." We descended into the dining-room, where we found that Mr Handycock had already devoured two of the whitings, leaving only one on the dish for his wife and me. "Vould you like a little bit of viting, my dear?" said the lady to me.
"Well, that's what I said to Jemima, when I went down in the kitchen. 'Jemima, says I, 'I wonder if little Peter Simple will know me. And Jemima says, 'I think he would the parrot, marm." "Mrs Handycock, I believe," said I, recollecting Jemima and the parrot, although, from a little thin woman, she had grown so fat as not to be recognisable.
We both had our share to-day, and I never saw a man more polite than Mr Handycock. He joked with his wife, asked me to drink wine with him two or three times, talked about my grandfather; and, in short, we had a very pleasant evening.
Mrs Handycock was a little meagre woman, who did not speak very good English, and who appeared to me to employ the major part of her time in bawling out from the top of the stairs to the servants below. I never saw her either read a book or occupy herself with needlework, during the whole time I was in the house.
"I hear it, marm," replied the cook; and she gave the frying-pan a twist, which made the hissing and the smell come flying up into the parlour, and made me more hungry than ever. Rap, tap, tap! "There's your master, Jemima," screamed the lady. "I hear him, marm," replied the cook. "Run down, my dear, and let Mr Handycock in," said his wife. "He'll be so surprised at seeing you open the door."
I ran down as Mrs Handycock desired me, and opened the street-door. "Who the devil are you?" in a gruff voice, cried Mr Handycock; a man about six feet high, dressed in blue cotton-net pantaloons and Hessian boots, with a black coat and waistcoat. I was a little rebuffed, I must own, but I replied that I was Mr Simple. "And pray, Mr Simple, what would your grandfather say if he saw you now?"
While Mr Handycock was rubbing his boots on the mat, I went upstairs rather mortified, I must own, as my father had told me that Mr Handycock was his stockbroker, and would do all he could to make me comfortable: indeed, he had written to that effect in a letter, which my father showed to me before I left home.
He took the lion's share, nevertheless, cutting off all the brown, and then shoving the dish over to his wife to help herself and me. I had not put two pieces in my mouth before Mr Handycock desired me to get up and hand him the porter-pot, which stood on the sideboard.
"He is quite well, ma'am," answered I, for the fifteenth time at least. But dinner put an end to the silence which followed this remark. Mr Handycock lowered his coat-tails and walked downstairs, leaving his wife and me to follow at our leisure. "Pray, ma'am," inquired I, as soon as he was out of hearing, "what is the matter with Mr Handycock, that he is so cross to you?"
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