that he'd anything to complain of--"'Thanking you, sir, I find
myself as well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth
is, sir, that I'm a going to seek my fortun.' 'O, indeed, Cobbs?' he
says, 'I hope you may find it.'" Boots hereupon giving his audience
the assurance, with the characteristic touch of the bootjack to his
forehead, that "he hadn't found it yet!"

Then came the delectable account of the elopement--full, true, and
particular--from the veracious lips of Cobbs himself, at that time, and
again some years afterwards, when he came to call up his recollections,
Boots at the Holly Tree Inn. Passages here and there in his description
of the incident were irrisistibly laughable. Master Harry's going down
to the old lady's in York, for example, "which old lady were so wrapt up
in that child as she would have give that child the teeth in her head
(if she had had any)." The arrival of "them two children," again at the
Holly Tree Inn, he, as bold as brass, tucking her in her little sky-blue
mantle under his arm, with the memorable dinner order, "Chops and cherry
pudding for two!" Their luggage, even, when gravely enumerated--the lady
having "a parasol, a smelling bottle, a round and a half of cold
buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a doll's hair-brush;" the
gentleman having "about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or
four sheets of writing paper folded up surprisingly small, a orange, and
a chaney mug with his name on it." Several of the little chance phrases,
the merest atoms of exclamation here and there, will still be borne in
mind as having had an intense flavour of fun about them, as syllabled in
the Reading. Boots's "Sir, to you," when his governor, the hotel-keeper,
proposes to run over to York to quiet their friends' minds, while Cobbs
keeps his eye upon the innocents! Master Harry's replying to Boots'
suggestion, that they should wile away the time by a walk down
Love-lane--"'Get out with you, Cobbs!'--that was that there boy's
expression." The glee of the children was prettily told too on their
finding "Good Cobbs! Dear Cobbs!" among the strangers around them at
their temporary halting-place. They themselves appearing smaller than
ever in his eyes, by reason of his finding them "with their little legs
entirely off the ground, of course--and it really is not possible to
express how small them children looked!--on a e-normous sofa;" immense
at any time, but looking like a Gr