Dinah Dew, the widowed mistress of the Cat and Fiddle informed him that she owed her sign to the skill of a poor tramping painter, who had run into her debt, to the enormous amount of five shillings and sevenpence half-penny, for board, washing, lodging, and drinking: and the poor fellow being penniless and without work, “I let him free,” said she, “for the sign, and gave him a shilling and a brown loaf over.”
This liberal patronage of the fine arts, (for the sign included music, poetry, and painting,) gave Twm a favourable opinion of his hostess. She apologized to him for the absence of her hostler, and said he was a poor ragged fellow with a pregnant wife, and two children; by trade a mat and basket maker; also a waiter at two other taverns; and an occasional husbandry servant with several farmers, who employed him in their busy times. “The fellow is well enough,” said the little round woman, “but for his cormorant appetite; and eat what he may, he never looks better for it. Indeed your horse would scarcely be safe with him, but that this is not the most hungry time of year.”
“I knew such another once,” thought Twm, his mind reverting to the hungry house of Morris Greeg; as he went forward on his walk over the fields. The said “hostler” soon overtook him, to ask his commands about his horse. Twm looked with compassion on the ragged Guy Fawkes figure before him, and conceived that he might earn a fair livelihood by merely walking over the farmer’s grounds, as all the kites and crows must inevitably flap their departing wings at his approach. Twm looked into a keen pair of ferret eyes, that glistened above a high-bridged parrot nose, and found no difficulty in identifying the miserable Moses of past days.
Twm’s spirit of joking was rampant within him, notwithstanding the morning’s vexations, and he determined upon having a little fun, in refreshing Moses’s memory regarding a few incidents which were best forgotten. Assuming an attitude of tremendous importance, and overwhelming authority, he commenced:
“You are the very fellow I have been long seeking. You ran away from the comfortable and very plentiful house of Morris Greeg, in Cardiganshire; after having in concert with a young scamp, named Twm Shon Catty, eaten all his pork and mutton.” Moses started and looked blue as indigo. “I’ll have thee put in stocks, and taken back to the house of that generous and most injured man,” cried Twm, in the tone of a jack-in-office.