. I dare say we shall be often together, and I should like to
banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me the favour to begin at
once to call me by my christian name, Herbert?«
    I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my
christian name was Philip.
    »I don't take to Philip,« said he, smiling, »for it sounds like a moral boy
out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat
that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his
cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird's-nesting that he got
himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighbourhood. I tell you what I
should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith - would you
mind it?«
    »I shouldn't mind anything that you propose,« I answered, »but I don't
understand you.«
    »Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of
music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.«
    »I should like it very much.«
    »Then, my dear Handel,« said he, turning round as the door opened, »here is
the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the table, because the
dinner is of your providing.«
    This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a nice
little dinner - seemed to me then, a very Lord Mayor's Feast - and it acquired
additional relish from being eaten under those independent circumstances, with
no old people by, and with London all around us. This again was heightened by a
certain gipsy character that set the banquet off; for, while the table was, as
Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury - being entirely furnished
forth from the coffee-house - the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a
comparatively pasture-less and shifty character: imposing on the waiter the
wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he fell over them),
the melted butter in the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in
the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the next room - where I
found much of its parsley and butter in a state of congelation when I retired
for the night. All this made the feast delightful
