The joy of his life was here to
stand, with goodly shirt sleeves shining, his bright cheeks also shining
in the sun, unless it were hot enough to hurt his goods. He was not a
great man, but a good one--in the opinion of all who owed him nothing,
and even in his own estimate, though he owed so much to himself. It was
enough to make any one who possessed a shilling hungry to see him so
clean, so ready, and ruddy among the many good things which his looks
and manner, as well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began
to smack his rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a
rasher, or a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red
herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard
enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering
one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the
constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all
cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the
weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine smack of salt
from the sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of expectation,
there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a presence of
hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of imagination. Hams of
the first rank and highest education, springs of pork sweeter than the
purest spring of poetry, pats of butter fragrant as the most delicious
flattery, chicks with breast too ample to require to be broken, and
sometimes prawns from round the headland, fresh enough to saw one
another's heads off, but for being boiled already.
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