street on Sunday nights, and to put them carefully in his pocket before
returning home; and it was quite notorious that on all great holiday
occasions it was his habit to exchange his plain steel knee-buckles for
a pair of glittering paste, under cover of a friendly post, planted most
conveniently in that same spot. Add to this that he was in years just
twenty, in his looks much older, and in conceit at least two hundred;
that he had no objection to be jested with, touching his admiration
of his master's daughter; and had even, when called upon at a certain
obscure tavern to pledge the lady whom he honoured with his love,
toasted, with many winks and leers, a fair creature whose Christian
name, he said, began with a D--;--and as much is known of Sim Tappertit,
who has by this time followed the locksmith in to breakfast, as is
necessary to be known in making his acquaintance.

It was a substantial meal; for, over and above the ordinary tea
equipage, the board creaked beneath the weight of a jolly round of beef,
a ham of the first magnitude, and sundry towers of buttered Yorkshire
cake, piled slice upon slice in most alluring order. There was also
a goodly jug of well-browned clay, fashioned into the form of an old
gentleman, not by any means unlike the locksmith, atop of whose bald
head was a fine white froth answering to his wig, indicative, beyond
dispute, of sparkling home-brewed ale. But, better far than fair
home-brewed, or Yorkshire cake, or ham, or beef, or anything to eat or
drink that earth or air or water can supply, there sat, presiding over
all, the locksmith's rosy daughter, before whose dark eyes even beef
grew insignificant, and malt became as nothing.

Fathers should never kiss their daughters when young men are by. It's
too much. There are bounds to human endurance. So thought Sim Tappertit
when Gabriel drew those rosy lips to his--those lips within Sim's reach