Page 278 - david-copperfield

a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-
store shops, and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference
to the regular dealers. At last I found one that I thought
looked promising, at the corner of a dirty lane, ending in
an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the palings of
which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to
have overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots,
and rusty guns, and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so
many old rusty keys of so many sizes that they seemed vari-
ous enough to open all the doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was
darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung
with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went
with a palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an
ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered
with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind
it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful
old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smell-
ing terribly of rum. His bedstead, covered with a tumbled
and ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come
from, where another little window showed a prospect of
more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce,
monotonous whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you
want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, go-
roo, goroo!’
I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly
by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind