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‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a
price on this here little weskit.’
‘Would eighteenpence be?’- I hinted, after some hesita-
tion.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I
should rob my family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence
for it.’
This was a disagreeable way of putting the business;
because it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger, the un-
pleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my
account. My circumstances being so very pressing, howev-
er, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr.
Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I
wished him good night, and walked out of the shop the
richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat. But when
I buttoned my jacket, that was not much. Indeed, I fore-
saw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that I
should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt
and a pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got
there even in that trim. But my mind did not run so much
on this as might be supposed. Beyond a general impression
of the distance before me, and of the young man with the
donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no very
urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with
my ninepence in my pocket.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which
I was going to carry into execution. This was, to lie behind
the wall at the back of my old school, in a corner where