trunk down?" he would have asked me what trunk? and what did
I want of it? and would not the other one be better? and
couldn't I wait till after dinner?--and so the trunk would
probably have had a three-days journey from garret to basement.
Now I am strong in the wrists and weak in the temper; therefore
I used the one and spared the other, and got the trunk
downstairs myself. Halicarnassus heard the uproar. He must
have been deaf not to hear it; for the old ark banged and
bounced, and scraped the paint off the stairs, and pitched
head-foremost into the wall, and gouged out the plastering,
and dented the mop-board, and was the most stupid, awkward,
uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got hold of in my life.

By the time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber,
Halicarnassus loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and
panting, with the inside of my fingers tortured into burning
leather, the skin rubbed off three knuckles, and a bruise on
the back of my right hand, where the trunk had crushed it
against a sharp edge of the doorway.

"Now, then?" said Halicarnassus interrogatively.

"To be sure," I replied affirmatively.

He said no more, but went and looked up the garret-stairs.
They bore traces of a severe encounter, that must be confessed.

"Do you wish me to give you a bit of advice?" he asked.

"No!" I answered promptly.