Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend_Part_1
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- 11 Oct 2024
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Not all heroes wear capes, but as Steph dashed to her Camry that rainy Saturday night She grabbed the vintage poncho that looks like a cake She is she definitely navigates the wet streets her rescue mission is clear arriving She flashes her brights her friend emerges and settles into the Camry seats Okay, worst they'd ever thank you so much quick getaways. It's a Camry vibe the all-new all hybrid Camry Toyota Let's go places Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon fresh Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites plus save 10% on Amazon brands Like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon fresh select varieties Our mutual friend by Charles Dickens Book one the cup and the lip chapter one on the lookout in these times of ours though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise a Boat of dirty and disreputable appearance with two figures in it floated on the Thames between South walk bridge Which is of iron and London bridge which is of stone as an autumn evening was closing in? The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with a ragged grizzled hair and a sun-brown face and A dark girl of 19 or 20 sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter The girl rode pulling a pair of skulls very easily The man with the rudder lines slacken his hands and his hands loosen his waistband kept an eager lookout He had no net hook or line and he could not be a fisherman His boat had no cushion for a sitter no paint no inscription no appliance beyond a rusty boat hook and a coil of rope And he could not be a waterman his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo for delivery and He could not be a lighter man or river carrier There was no clue to what he looked for but he looked for something with the most intent and searching gaze The tide which had turned an hour before was running down and his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad Sweep as the boat made slight headway against it or drove stone foremost before it According as he directed his daughter by a movement of his head She watched his face as earnestly as he watched the river But in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror Aligned to the bottom of the river rather than the surface By reason of the slime and ooze with which it was covered and its sudden state This boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing something that they often did and were seeking what they often sought Half savage as the man showed with no covering on his matit head With his brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder With the loose knot of a looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard and whisker With such dress as he wore seeming to be made out of the mud that begrined his boat Still there was a business like usage in his steady gaze So with every live action of the girl Every turn of her wrist perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror. They were things of usage Keep her out Lizzy tide runs strong here Keep her well or for the sweep of it Trust into the girl's skill and making no use of the rudder. He eyed the coming tide with an absorbed attention So the girl eyed him but it happened now that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat and Touching a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form Colored it as though with diluted blood This caught the girl's eye and she shivered "What ails you?" said the man immediately aware of it though so intent on the advancing waters. "I see nothing a float." The red light was gone the shutter was gone and his gaze which had come back to the boat for a moment traveled away again Wheresoever the strong tide met with an impediment his gaze paused for an instant At every mooring chain and rope at every stationary boat or barge that split the current into a broad arrow head At the offsets from the piers of south walk bridge at the paddles of the river steamboat as they beat the filthy water At the floating logs of timber lashed together lying off certain warbs His shining eyes darted a hungry look After darkening hour or so suddenly the rudder lines tightened in his hold and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore Always watching his face the girl instantly answered to the action in her sculling Presently the boat swung round Covered from a sudden jerk and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern the girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore over her head and over her face and Looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were turned down the river Kept the boat in that direction going before the tide Until now the boat had barely held her own and had hovered about one spot But now the banks changed swiftly and the deepening shadows and the kindling lights of London Bridge were passed and the tears of shipping lay on either hand It was not until now at the upper half of the man came back into the boat His arms were wet and dirty and he washed them over the side In his right hand he held something and he washed that in the river - it was money He chinked it once and he blew upon it once and he spat upon it once For luck He hoarsely said before he put it in his pocket Lizzy The girl turned her face towards him with a start and rode in silence Her face was very pale He was a hook-nosed man and with that and his bite eyes and his ruffled head bore a certain likeness to a roused bird of prey Take that thing off your face She put it back Yeah, give me all of the skulls. I'll take the rest of the spill No, no father. No. I can't indeed father. I cannot sit so near it He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat What hurt can it do you? none None, but I cannot bear it It's my belief. You hate the sight of the very river. I I do not like it father As if it wasn't your living as if it wasn't meat and drink to you At these latter words the girl shivered again and for a moment paused and her rowing seeming to turn deadly faint It escaped his attention, but he was glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow How can you be so thankless to your best friend Lizzy? The very fire that warmed you when you were a babbie was picked out of the river alongside a cow barges The very basket that you slept in it tired washed ashore The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle of it I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or another Lizzy took her right hand from the skull it held and touched her lips with it and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him Then without speaking she resumed her rowing as another boat of similar appearance Though in rather better trim came out from a dark place and dropped softly alongside In luck again gaffer Said a man with a squinting leer who scold her and who was alone. I Knowed you was in luck again by your wake as you come down ah Replied the other dryly so you're out are you? Yes, partner There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river and the newcomer keeping half his boat's length the stern of the other boat But hard at its track I says to myself He went on directly you over view Yonder's gaffer and in luck again by Georgia the ain't Sculled is partner. Don't fret yourself. I didn't touch him This was an answer to a quick impatient movement on the part of gaffer The speaker at the same time unshipping his skull on that side and laying his hand on the gunnel of gaffer's boat and holding to it He's had touches enough not to want no more as well as I make him out gaffer Being and knocking about with a pretty many ties ain't he partner? Such is my out of luck ways. You see he must have passed me when he went up last time Or I was on the lookout below bridge here. I Almost think you're like the Walters partner and sent him out You've spoken a dropped voice and with more than one glance at Lizzie who had pulled on her hood again Both men then looked for the weird unholy interest in the wake of gaffer's boat Easy does it betwixt us? Shall I take him aboard partner? No Said the other in so silly atone at the man after a blank stare acknowledged it with the retort or Beany in nothing as is disagreed with you ever you partner Why yes, I have Said gaffer I have been swallowing too much of that word partner. I'm no partner of yours Since when was you no partner of mine gaffer exima squire? Since you was accused of robbing a man accused of robbing a live man said gaffer with great indignation and What have I had been accused of robbing a dead man gaffer? You couldn't do it Couldn't you gaffer? No Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man who have money or world does a dead man belong to? To other world what world does money belong to this world out and money via corpses? Can a corpse own it want it spend it claim it miss it? Don't try to go confounding their rights and wrongs of things in that way But it's worthy of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man I'll tell you what it is. No You won't I'll tell you what it is You got off with a short time of it of putting your hand in the pocket of a sailor a Live sailor make the most of it. I think you're self-lucky But don't think after that to come over me with your partners We have worked together in time last but we work together now more in time present nor yet future let go cast off Gaffer if you think to get rid of me this way If I don't get rid of you this way I'll try another and chop you over the fingers with the stretcher or take a picket your head with a boat hook cast off Pull you Lizzy pull home since you won't let your father pull Lizzy shot ahead and the other boat fell astern Lizzy's father composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the high moralities and taken an Unassailable position slowly lighted a pipe and smoked and took a survey of what he had in tow What he had in tow lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat was checked and Sometimes it seemed to try to wrench itself away though for the most part. It followed submissively a Neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face But Gaffer was no neophyte and had no fancies End of book one chapter one Chapter two the man from somewhere Mr.. Mrs.. Veneering were brand new people in a brand new house in a brand new quarter of London Everything about the veneerings was spick and span new Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon fresh Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites plus save 10% on Amazon brands like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon fresh select varieties As a united explorer card member you can earn 50,000 bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards Including a free-checked bag two times the miles on united purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels become an explorer and seek out Unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC Subject to credit approval offer subject to change terms apply All their furniture is new all their friends were new all their servants were new Their plate was new their carriage was new their harness was new Their horses were new their pictures were new they themselves were new They were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with they having a brand new baby And if they had set up a great-grandfather He would have come home in matting from the pantychnicon without a scratch upon him French polished to the crown of his head For in the veneering establishment and the hall chairs with the new coat of arms to the grand piano forte with the new action and upstairs again to the new fire escape all things were in a state of high varnish and polish and What was observable in the furniture was observable in the veneerings? The surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and was a trifle sticky There was an innocent piece of dinner furniture that went upon easy casters and was kept over a livery stable yard in Duke Street St. James's when not in use to whom the veneerings were a source of blind confusion The name of this article was Twemlow Being first cousin to Lord Snigsworth He was in frequent requisition and at many houses might be said to represent the dining table in its normal state Mr. Mrs. Veneering for example arranging a dinner Abitually started with Twemlow and then put leaves in him or added guests to him Sometimes the table consisted of Twemlow and half a dozen leaves Sometimes a Twemlow and a dozen leaves Sometimes Twemlow was pulled out to his utmost extent of 20 leaves Mr. Mrs. Veneering on occasions of ceremony faced each other in the center of the board and thus the parallel still held For it always happened that the more Twemlow was pulled out the further He found himself from the center and nearer to the sideboard at one end of the room or the window curtains at the other But it was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in confusion This he was used to and could take soundings of The abyss to which he could find no bottom and from which started forth the engrossing and ever swelling difficulty of his life Was the insoluble question whether he was Veneering's oldest friend or newest friend To the ex-conjutation of this problem the harmless gentleman had devoted many anxious hours Both in his lodgings over the livery stable yard and in the cold gloom favorable to meditation of St. James's Square Thus Twemlow had first known Veneering at his club Where Veneering then knew nobody but the man who made them known to one another Who seemed to be the most intimate friend he had in the world and whom he had known two days? The bond of union between their souls the nefarious conduct of the committee respecting the cookery of a fillet of veal Having been accidentally cemented at that date Immediately upon this Twemlow received an invitation to dine with Veneering and dined the man being of the party Immediately upon that Twemlow received an invitation to dine with the man and dined Veneering being of the party At the man's were a member an engineer a payer off of the national debt a poem on Shakespeare Agrivens and a public office who all seem to be utter strangers to Veneering and yet immediately after that Twemlow received an invitation to dine at Veneering's Expressley to meet the member the engineer the payer off of the national debt the poem on Shakespeare the grievance and the public office and Dining discovered that all of them were the most intimate friends Veneering had in the world And that the wives of all of them who were all there were the objects of Mrs Veneering's most devoted affection and tender confidence Thus it had come about that mr Twemlow had said to himself in his lodgings with his hand to his forehead "I must not think this this is enough to soften any man's brain And yet was always thinking of it and could never form a conclusion This evening the Veneering's give a banquet. Eleven leaves in the Twemlow Fourteen in company all told four pigeon-breasted retainers in plain clothes stand in line in the hall a fifth Retainer proceeding up the staircase with the mournful air as who should say here is another wretched creature come to dinner such as life Announces mr. Twemlow Mrs. Veneering welcomes her sweet mr. Twemlow mr. Veneering welcomes his dear Twemlow Mrs. Veneering does not expect that mr. Twemlow can in nature care much for such insipid things as babies But so old a friend must please to look at baby "Ah, you will know the friend of your family better, total tums" says mr Veneering, nodding emotionally at that new article when you begin to take notice He then begs to make his dear Twemlow known to his two friends mr. Boots and mr. Brewer and clearly has no distinct idea which is which But now a fearful circumstance occurs mr. and Mrs. Podsnap "My dear" Says mr. Veneering to mrs. Veneering with an air of much friendly interest while the door stands open the Podsnaps a Too too smiling large man with a fatal freshness on him appearing with his wife instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow with How do you do? So glad to know you charming house you have here. I hope we're not late. So glad of the opportunity. I'm sure When the first shock fell upon him Twemlow twice skipped back in his neat little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone fashion as If impelled to leap over a sofa behind him, but the large man closed with him and proved too strong let me Says the large man trying to attract the attention of his wife in the distance How the pleasure of presenting Mrs. Podsnap to a host she will be Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon fresh Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites plus save 10% on Amazon brands Like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon fresh select varieties As a united explorer card member you can earn 50,000 bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards Including a free-checked bag two times the miles on united purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change terms apply in his fatal freshness He seems to find perpetual murder and eternal youth in the phrase. She will be so glad of the opportunity I'm sure in the meantime Mrs. Podsnap unable to originate a mistake on her own account because Mrs. Veneering is the only other lady there Does her best in the way of handsomely supporting her husband's by looking towards Mr. Twemlow with a plaintiff? countenance and remarking to Mrs. Veneering in a feeling manner Firstly that your fears he has been rather bilious of late and secondly that the baby is already very like him It is questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for any other man But Mr. Veneering having this very evening set up the shirt front of the young antennas in new worked Cambric just come home as not at all complemented by being supposed to be Twemlow who was dry and wheezing and some 30 years older Mrs. Veneering equally resents the invitation of being the wife of Twemlow as to Twemlow He is so sensible of being a much better bread man than Veneering that he considers of the large man an offensive ass in this complicated dilemma mr. Veneering approaches the large man with extended hand and Smilingly assures that incorrigible personage that he is delighted to see him who in his fatal freshness instantly replies Thank you I'm ashamed to say that I can't at this moment recall where we met, but I'm so glad of this opportunity. I'm sure Then pouncing upon Twemlow who holds back with all his feeble might He is hailing him off to present him as Veneering to Mrs. Podsnap when the arrival of more guests unravels the mistake Whereupon having reshaken hands of the nearing as Veneering he reshakes hands with Twemlow as Twemlow and winds it all up To his perfect satisfaction by saying to the last named Ridiculous opportunity, but so glad of it. I'm sure now Tremlow having undergone this terrific experience having likewise noted the fusion of boots in brewer and brewer in boots and Having further observed that of the remaining seven guests four discrete characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly declined to commit themselves As to which is Veneering until Veneering has them in his grasp Tremlow having profited by these studies finds his brain wholesomely hardening as he approaches the conclusion that he really is Veneering's oldest friend when his brain softens again and all is lost through his eyes and countering Veneering and the large man linked together as twin brothers in the Back-drawing room near the conservatory door and through his ears and forming him in the tones of Mrs Veneering at the same large man is to be baby's godfather Dinner is on the table Thus the melancholy retainer as who should say come down and be poisoned young happy children of men Tremlow having no lady assigned him goes down in the rear with his hand to his forehead boots and brewer thinking him in disposed whisper man faint had no lunch But he is only stunned by the unvankishable difficulty of his existence revived by soup Tremlow discourses mildly of the court circular with boots and brewer is Appeal to at the fish stage of the banquet by Veneering on the disputed question whether his cousin Lord Snicksworth is in or out of town Gives it that his cousin is out of town at Snicksworthy Park Veneering enquirers hmm Snicksworthy Tremlow rejoins boots and brewer regard this as a man to be cultivated and Veneering is clear that he is a remunerative article Meantime the retainer goes round like a gloomy analytical chemist always seeming to say after Sheblis sir You wouldn't if you knew what it's made of The great-looking glass above the sideboard reflects the table and the company reflects the new Veneering crest in gold and eke in silver Frusted and also thawed a camel of all work The Herald's College found out a crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield or might have done if he had thought of it and a caravan of camels take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles and kneel down to be loaded with the salt reflects Veneering 40 wavy-haired dark tending to corpulence sly mysterious fill me a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled profit not prophesying reflects mrs. Veneering fair Aquiline nose and fingered not so much light hair she might have gorgeous and raiment and duels Enthusiastic propituitary conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is over herself reflects pod snap Prosperously feeding two little light colored wiry wings one on either side of his elspauled head Looking as like his hair brushes as his hair dissolving view of red beads on his forehead large allowance a crumpled shirt color up behind reflects mrs. Podsnap fine woman for professor Owen quantity of bone neck and nostrils like a rocking horse hard features majestic headdress and which Podsnap has hung golden offerings reflects twem low gray dry polite susceptible to east wind First gentleman in Europe collar and crevat Cheeks drawn in as if he had made a great effort to retire into himself some years ago and had got so far and had never got any father reflects mature young lady Raven locks and complexion it lights up well and well-powered as it is Carrying on considerably in the captivation of mature young gentlemen with too much nose in his face too much ginger in his whiskers Too much torso in his waistcoat too much sparkling his studs his eyes his buttons his talk and his teeth reflects charming old lady tippens and veneering's right with an immense obtuse drab oblong face Like a face and a tablespoon and a dyed long walk up on the top of her head as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind Please to patronize mrs. Veneering opposite who is pleased to be patronized reflects a certain Mortimer another of Veneering's oldest friends who never was in the house before and appears not to want to come again Who sits disconsulate on mrs. Veneering's left and who was in viegled by lady tippens a friend of his boyhood to come to these people's and talk And who won't talk? reflects you gene friend of Mortimer buried live in the back of his chair behind a shoulder with a powder epilate on it of The mature young lady and gloomily resorting to the champagne cellus when ever proffered by the analytical chemist Lastly the looking glass reflects boots and brewer and two other stuffed buffers interpose between the rest of the company and possible accidents The veneering dinners are excellent dinners or new people wouldn't come and all goes well Notably lady tippens has made a series of experiments on her digestive functions So extremely complicated and daring that if they could be published with their results, it might benefit the human race Having taken in provisions from all parts of the world This hardy old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole When as the ice plates are being removed the following words fall from her Are you sure you my dear veneering? Poor Twemlow's hand approaches his forehead what it would seem now that lady tippens is going to be the oldest friend I You're sure you my dear veneering that it is the oldest affair Like the advertising people. I didn't ask you to trust me without offering a respectable reference Mortimer there is my reference and knows all about it Mortimer raises his drooping eyelids and slightly opens his mouth But a faint smile expressive of what's the use passes over his face and he drops his eyelids and shut his mouth No, Mortimer Says lady tippens wrapping the sticks of a closed green fan upon the knuckles of her left hand, which is particularly rich in knuckles I insist upon your telling all that is to be told about the man from Jamaica Give you my honor. I never heard of any man from Jamaica except the man who was a brother replies Mortimer to be girl then No, yet from Tobago Except Eugene strikes in so unexpectedly the mature young lady who's forgotten all about him with a start takes the epilate out of his way Except our friend who long lived on rice pudding and icing glass To the length to his something or other his position said something else and a leg of mutton somehow ended in there go A reviving impression goes around the table that Eugene is coming out an Unfulfilled impression before he goes in again Now my dear Mrs. Vendiering quotes lady tippens. I appeal to you Whether this is not the basis conduct ever known in this world I Carry my lovers about two or three at a time or in condition that they are very obedient and devoted And here is my oldest lover in chief the head of all my slaves Throwing off his allegiance before company and here is another of my lovers a rough Simon at present Certainly, but of whom I had most hopeful expectations as to as turning out well in course of time Pretending that he can't remember his nursery rhymes on purpose to annoy me for he knows how I dot upon them a grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is lady tippens's point She's always attended my lover or two and she keeps a little list of her lovers And she's always booking a new lover or striking out an old lover or putting a lover in her Blattlist or promoting a lover to her blue list or adding up her lovers or otherwise posting her book Mrs. Vendiering is charmed by the humor and so is Vendiering Perhaps it is enhanced by a certain yellow play and lady tippens a throat like the legs of scratching poultry I Banish the false wretch from this moment and I strike him out of my cubed on my name for my ledger my dear This very night But I'm resolved to have the account of the man from somewhere and I beg you to elicit it for me my love To mrs. Vendiering as I have lost my own influence. Oh, you're perjured man This to Mortimer was a rattle of her fan We are all very much interested in the man from somewhere Vendiering observes then the four buffers taking heart of grace all forward once say Deeply interested quite excited dramatic man from nowhere perhaps Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon fresh Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites plus save 10% on Amazon brands like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon fresh select varieties As a united explorer card member you can earn 50,000 bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards Including a free-checked bag two times the miles on united purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels become an explorer and seek Out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC Subject to credit approval offer subject to change terms apply And then Mrs. Vendiering for the lady tippens his winning wiles are contagious Fold her hands in the manner of a supplicating child turns to her left neighbor and says Cheese pay man from town where? At which the four buffers again mysteriously moved all forward once explained you can't resist Upon my life This is Mortimer languidly I Find it immensely embarrassing to have the eyes of Europe upon me to this extent And my only consolation is that you will all of you ex-great lady tippens in your secret hearts When you find as you inevitably will the man from somewhere a bore Sorry to destroy a man by fixing him with a local habitation But he comes in the place the name of which escapes me, but will suggest itself to everybody else here where they make the wine Eugene suggests day and Martins No, not that place Returns the unmoved Mortimer and that's where they make the port My man comes in the country when they make the Cape wine, but your hero fellow, it's all statistical and it's rather odd It is always noticeable at the table of the veneerings that no man troubles himself much about the veneerings themselves And that anyone who has anything to tell generally tells it to anybody else in preference The man Mortimer goes on addressing Eugene whose name is Harmon was only son of a tremendous old rascal who made his money by dust Red velvettines and a bell the gloomy Eugene and choirs and A ladder and basket if you like by which means or by others he grew rich as a dust contractor and lived in a hollow in a hilly country entirely composed of dust On his own small state the growling old vagabond threw up his own mountain range like an old volcano and its geological Formation was dust cold dust Vegetable dust bone dust crockery dust rough dust and sifted dust all manner of dust A passing remembrance of Mrs. Veneering here induces Mortimer to address his next half dozen words to her after which he wanders away again Tries tremolo and finds he doesn't answer ultimately takes up with the buffers who receive him enthusiastically The moral being I believe that's the right expression of this exemplary person Derived its highest gratification from anathematizing his nearest relations and turning them out of doors Having begun as was natural by rendering these attention to the wife of his bosom He next found himself a letter to bestow a similar recognition on the claims of his daughter He chose a husband for her entire to his own satisfaction and not in the least to hers and proceeded to settle upon her as her marriage portion I don't know how much dust but something immense At this stage of the affair the poor girl respectfully intimated that she was secretly engaged to that popular character whom the novelists and Versifiers call another and that such a marriage would make dust of her heart and dust of her life in short Would set her up on a very extensive scale in her father's business? Immediately the venerable parent on a cold winter's night. It is said anathematized and turned her out Here the analytical chemist was evidently formed a very low opinion of Mortimer's story Concedes a little claret to the buffers who again Mysteriously moved all four at once screw it slowly into themselves the peculiar twist of enjoyment as they cry in chorus pray go on and The vocabulary resources of another were as they usually are of a very limited nature I believe I am not using too strong an expression when I say that another was hard up However, he married the young lady and they lived in a humble dwelling Probably possessing a porch ornamented with honey suckle and wood-bine twining Until she died I must refer you to the registrar of the district in which the humble dwelling was situated for the certified cause of death But early sorrow and anxiety may have had to do with it Though they may not appear in the ruled pages and printed forms Indusputably this was the case with another for he was so cut up by the loss of his young wife that if he outlived to a year It was as much as he did There is that and the indolent Mortimer which seems to hint that if good society might on any account allow itself to be Impressible he one of good society might have the witness to be impressed by what he here relates It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him The gloomy Eugene - is not without some kindred touch for when that appalling lady tip pence declares That if another had survived he should have gone down at the head of her list of lovers And also when the mature young lady shrugs her epilets and laughs at some private and confidential comment from the mature young gentleman His gloom deepens to that degree that he trifles quite ferociously with his dessert knife Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites Plus they've 10% on Amazon brands like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh select varieties As a united explorer card member you can earn 50,000 bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards Including a free-checked bag two times the miles on united purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels become an explorer and seek out Unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC Subject to credit approval offer subject to change terms apply Mortimer proceeds We must now return as novelists say and as we all wish they wouldn't to the man from somewhere Being a boy of 14 she play educated Brussels when his sister's expulsion befell It was some little time before he heard of it probably from herself for the mother was dead, but that I don't know Instantly he absconded and came over here He must have been a boy of spirit and resource to get here on a stopped allowance of five sews a week But he did it somehow and he burst in on his father and pleaded his sister's cause venerable parent promptly resorts to a nethermatization and turns about Shocked and terrified boy takes flight seeks his fortune gets aboard ship Ultimately turns up on dry land among the Cape wine small proprietor farmer grower. Whatever you like to call it At this juncture shuffling is heard in the hall and tapping is heard at the dining room door Analytical chemist goes to the door confers angrily with unseen taper appears to become Molified by describing reason in the tapping and goes out So he was discovered only the other day after having being expatriated about 14 years a buffer suddenly astounding the other three by detaching himself and asserting individuality inquires how discovered and why ah To be sure thank you for reminding me venerable parent dies same buffer emboldened by success says when the other day 10 or 12 months ago same buffer inquires with smartness what of But here in perishes a melancholy example being regarded by the three other buffers for the stony stare and attracting no further attention from any mortal venerable parent Mortimer repeats with the passing remembrance that there is a veneering at table and for the first time addressing him dies the gratified veneering repeats gravely dies and Fold his arms and composes his brow to hear it out in a judicial manner when he finds himself again deserted in the bleak world His will is found said Mortimer catching mrs. Podsnap's rocking horse's eye It is dated very soon out of the sun's flight It leaves the lowest of the range of dust mountains with some sort of a dwelling house at its foot to an old servant Who was sole executor and all the rest of the property, which is very considerable to the sun He directs himself to be buried with certain eccentric ceremonies and precautions against his coming to life With which I need not bore you and that's all except And this ends the story The analytical chemist returning everybody looks at him Not because anybody wants to see him but because of that subtle influence in nature which impels humanity to embrace the slightest opportunity of looking at anything rather than the person who addresses it Except at the sun's inheriting is made conditional on his marrying a girl Who at the date of the will was a child of four or five years old and who is now a marriageable young woman? Antisement and inquiry discovered the sun and the man from somewhere and at the present moment He is on his way home from there. No doubt in a state of great Astonishment to succeed to a very large fortune and to take a wife mrs. Podsnap inquires whether the young person is a young person of personal charms Mortimer is unable to report Mr. Podsnap inquires what would become of the very large fortune in the event of the marriage conditions not being fulfilled Mortimer replies that by special testamentary clause it would then go to the old servant about mentioned Passing over and excluding the Sun also that if the Sun had not been living the same old servant would have been sold Residory legatee Mrs. Veneering has just succeeded in waking lady tippins from a snore by dexterously shunting a train of plates and dishes at her knuckles across the table When everybody but Mortimer himself becomes aware that the analytical chemist is in a ghostly manner offering him a folded paper Curiosity detains mrs. Veneering a few moments Mortimer in spite of all the arts of the chemist Placidly refreshes himself with the glass of Madeira and remains unconscious of the document which engrosses the general attention Until lady tippins who has a habit of waking totally insensible having remembered where she is and recovered a perception of surrounding objects says For some man than done one. Why don't you take the note from the commender Tory? Upon which the chemist advances it under the nose of Mortimer who looks round at him and says what's this? Analytical chemist bends and whispers who? Says Mortimer analytical chemist again bends and whispers Mortimer stares at him and unfolds the paper We did we did twice Turns it over to look at the blank outside. We did a third time This Arrives in an extraordinary opportune manner says Mortimer then looking with an otter face around the table This is the conclusion of the story of the identical man Already married one guesses declines to marry Another guesses coda sill among the dust another guesses Why no? This is Mortimer remarkable thing You're all wrong The story is completer and rather more exciting than I supposed man's drowned End of book one chapter two chapter four the R Wilfer family Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound suggesting on first acquaintance brasses in country churches scrolls and stained glass windows and Generally, the dwarfers who came over with the conqueror for it is a remarkable fact in genealogy That no de anyone's ever came over with anybody else But the Reginald Wilfer family would have such commonplace extraction and pursuits that therefore fathers had for generations modestly subsisted on the docks the excise office and the custom house and the existing R Wilfer was a poor clerk So poor o'clock though having a limited salary and an unlimited family that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition Which was to wear a complete new suit of clothes hat and boots included at one time? His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat His pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots His boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons and by the time he worked round to the hat again that shining modern article roofed in an ancient ruin of various periods if The conventional cherub could ever grow up and be clothed. He might be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer His chubby smooth innocent appearance was a reason for his being always treated with condescension when he was not put down a Stranger entering his own poor house at about ten o'clock p.m. Might have been surprised to find him sitting up to supper So boyish was he in his curves and proportions that his old schoolmaster meeting him in cheap side Might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot In short, he was the conventional cherub after the supposititious shoot just mentioned rather gray with signs of care on his expression and indecidedly insolvent circumstances He was shy and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald as being too aspiring and self-assertive a name in His signature he used only the initial are and Imparted what it really stood for to none but chosen friends under the seal of confidence Out of this the facetious habit had arisen in the neighborhood surrounding mincing lane of making Christian names for him of adjectives and participles beginning with R Some of these were more or less appropriate as rusty retiring Vadi round wipe ridiculous ruminative Others derived their point from they want of application as raging rattling roaring rafish But his popular name was rumpty Which in a moment of inspiration had been bestowed upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits Connected with the drug markets as the beginning of a social chorus his leading part in the execution of which Had led this gentleman to the temple of fame and of which the whole expressive burden ran rumpty itty rowdowdow sing toodly teedly bow wow wow Thus he was constantly addressed even in minor notes on business as dear rumpty in answer to which he sedately signed himself Yours truly are wilfer He was Clark in the drug house of Chixi veneering and stobbles Chixi and stobbles his former masters had both become absorbed in veneering once their traveler or commission agent Who had signalized his accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity of plate glass window and French polished mahogany partition and a gleaming and enormous door plate Our wilfer locked up his desk one evening and putting his bunch of keys in his pocket much as if it were his peg top made for home His home was in the Holloway region north of london and then divided from it by fields and trees Hey Amazon Prime members why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon fresh Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites Plus they've 10% on Amazon brands like our new brand Amazon's favor 365 by Whole Foods market a plenty and more come back for new deals rotating every week Don't miss out on savings shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon fresh select varieties As a united explorer card member you can earn 50,000 bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards Including a free-checked bag two times the miles on united purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels become an explorer and seek out Unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC subject to credit approval Offer subject to change terms apply Between battle bridge and that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt was a tract of suburban Sahara Where tiles and bricks were burnt bones were boiled carpets were beat rubbish was shot dogs were fought and dust was heaped by contractors skirting the border of this desert by the way he took when the light of its kiln fires made lurid smears on the fog our Will for side and shook his head No me said he What might have been his not what is With which commentary on human life indicating an experience of it not exclusively his own He made the best of his way to the end of his journey Mrs. Wilfer was of course a tall woman and an angular her lord being cherubic she was necessarily majestic according to the principle which matrimonially unites contrasts She was much given to tying up her head in a pocket handkerchief knotted under the chin This headgear in conjunction with a pair of gloves worn within doors She seemed to consider as at once a kind of armor against misfortune invariably assuming it when in low spirits or difficulties and as a species of full dress It was therefore with some sinking of the spirit that her husband beheld her thus heroically attired Putting down her candle in the little hall and coming down the door steps to the little front court to open the gate for him something had gone wrong with the house door for our Wilfer stopped on the steps staring at it and cried oh No Yes Said Mrs Wilfer the man came himself with a pair of pincers and took it off and took it away He said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid for it and as he had an order for another lady school door plate It was better burnished up for the interests of all parties Perhaps it was it's my dear. What do you think? You are master here are W Returned his wife. It is as you think not as I do Perhaps it might have been better if the man had taken the door to My dear we couldn't have done without the door couldn't we Why my dear could we? It is as you think are W not as I do With those submissive words the dutiful wife proceeded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room half kitchen half parlor Where a girl of about 19 with an exceedingly pretty figure and face But with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders Which in her sex at her age are very expressive of discontent Set playing draughts with a younger girl who was the youngest at the house of Wilfer? Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail and casting them up in the gross It is enough for the present that the rest were what is called out in the world in various ways and that they were many So many that when one of his beautiful children called in to see him Our Wilfer generally seemed to say to himself after little mental arithmetic Oh, here's another of him before adding aloud. How did he do John or Susan as the case might be? Well piggy-wiggies Said our W. How did he do tonight? What I was thinking of my dear To Mrs Wilfer already seated in the corner with folded gloves Was that as we have let our first floor so well And as we have now no place in which you could teach pupils even if pupils The milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest respectability Who were in search of a suitable establishment and he took a card? Interpose Mrs Wilfer with severe monotony as if she were reading an act of Parliament aloud Tell your father whether it was last Monday Bella But we never heard any more of it ma said Bella the elder girl In addition to which my dear Her husband urged if you have no place to put two young persons into Pardon me Mrs Wilfer again interposed They were not young persons two young ladies that the highest respectability tell your father Bella whether the milkman said so My dear, it is the same thing No, it is not Said Mrs Wilfer with the same impressive monotony pardon me I mean my dear. It is the same thing as to space as to space If you have no space in which to put two youthful fellow creatures However, eminently respectable, which I do not doubt Where are those youthful fellow creatures to be accommodated? I carry it no further than that and solely looking at it Said her husband making the stipulation at once in a conciliatory complimentary and argumentative tone as I am sure you will agree my love from a fellow creature point of view my dear I Have nothing more to say return. Mrs. Wilfer with a meek renunciatory action of her gloves It is as you think are w not as I do Here the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men are to swoop aggravated by the coronation of an opponent Led to that young ladies jerking the draft board and pieces off the table which her sister went down on her knees to pick up poor Bella Ted, Mrs. Wilfer and poor live in your perhaps my dear suggested rw pardon me Ted, Mrs. Wilfer. No It was one of the worthy woman's specialities that she had an amazing power of gratifying her Splinetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling her own family which she thus proceeded in the present case to do no rw Lavina has not known the trial that Bella has known The trial that your daughter Bella has undergone is perhaps without a parallel and has been born. I will say nobly When you see your daughter Bella in her black dress Which she alone of all the family wears and when you remember the circumstances which have led to her wearing it And when you know how these circumstances have been sustained Then rw lay your head upon your pillow and say poor Lavina Here, Miss Lavina from her kneeling situation under the table put in that you didn't want to be poured by power or anybody else I am sure you do not my dear Return to her mother for you have a fine brave spirit and your sister Cecilia has a fine brave spirit of another kind a spirit of pure devotion a beautiful spirit The self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character very seldom equal never surpassed I have now in my pocket a letter from your sister Cecilia received this morning receives three months after her marriage Poor child in which she tells me that her husband must unexpectedly shelter under their roof his reduced aunt But I will be true to him mama. She touching me writes. I will not leave him I must not forget that he is my husband let his aunt come if this is not pathetic if this is not woman's devotion The good lady waved her gloves in a sense of the impossibility of saying more and tied the pocket handkerchief over her head in a tighter not under her chin Bella who is now seated on the rug to warm herself with her brown eyes on the fire and a handful of brown curls in her mouth laughed at this and then pouted and half-cried I Am sure Said she though you have no feeling for me par. I am one of the most unfortunate girls that ever lived You know how poor we are It is probably he did having some reason to know it and what a glimpse of wealth I had and how it melted away and how I am here in this ridiculous morning Which I hate a kind of a widow who never was married and yet you don't feel for me Yes, you do. Yes, you do This abrupt change was occasioned by her father's face She stopped to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favorable to strangulation and to give him a kiss And a pat or two on the cheek But you ought to feel for me, you know par Mind yeah, I do Yes, and I say you ought to if they'd only left me alone and told me nothing about it It would have mattered much less But that nasty mr. Lightwood feels at his duty as he says to write and tell me what is in reserve for me And then I'm obliged to get rid of George Sampson Here live in you rising to the surface for the last draftman rescued interposed You never cared for George Sampson Bella and did I say I did miss and Pounding again with the curls in her mouth George Sampson was very fond of me and admired me very much and put up with Everything I did to him You were rude enough to him live in you're again interposed And did I say I wasn't miss I'm not setting up to be sentimental about George Sampson I only say George Sampson was better than nothing You didn't show him that you thought even that Live in you're again interposed You are a chit and a little idiot Returned Bella or you wouldn't make such a dolly speech What did you expect me to do? Wait till you are a woman and don't talk about what you don't understand. You only show your ignorance Then whimpering again and it intervals biting the curls and stopping to look how much was bitten off It's a shame. They never was such a hard case. I shouldn't care so much if it wasn't so ridiculous It was ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me whether he liked it or not It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrassing meeting it would be and how we never could pretend to have an inclination of our own Either of us it was ridiculous enough to know I shouldn't like him. How could I like him? Left to him and it will like a dozen spoons with everything cut and dried beforehand like orange chips Talk of orange flowers indeed. I declare again. It's a shame Those ridiculous points would have been smoothed away by the money for I love money and want money Want it dreadfully I hate to be poor and we're degradingly poor Miserably poor miserably poor beastly poor But here I am Left with all the ridiculous parts of the situation remaining and added to them all this ridiculous dress And if the tooth was known when the harm and murder was all over the town and people were speculating on its being suicide I dare say those impotent wretches at the clubs in places made jokes about the miserable creatures Having preferred a watery grave to me It's likely enough. It took such liberties. I shouldn't wonder I declare it's a very hard case indeed And I'm a most unfortunate girl the idea of being a kind of a widow and never having been married and The idea of being as poor as ever after all and going into black besides for a man I never saw and should have hated as far as he was concerned if I had seen The young ladies' lamentations were checked at this point by a knuckle knocking at the half open door of the room The knuckle had knocked two or three times already, but had not been heard "Who is it?" said Mrs. Wilfer in her act of Parliament Manor. "Enter!" A gentleman coming in Miss Beller was a short and sharp exclamation Scrambled off the hearth rug and masked the bitten curls together in their right place on her neck The seven-girl had her key in the door as I came up and directed me to this room telling me I was expected I'm afraid I should have asked her to announce me "Pardon me!" returned Mrs. Wilfer. "Not at all." "Two of my daughters" "R.W." "This is the gentleman who was taken your first floor He was so good as to make an appointment for tonight when you would be at home" A dark gentleman, thirty at the utmost, an expressive, one might say, handsome, face, a very bad manner In the last degree, constrained, reserved, difficult, troubled His eyes were on Miss Beller for an instant and then looked at the ground as he addressed the master of the house Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr. Wilfer with the rooms and with their situation and with their price I suppose a memorandum between us of two or three lines and a payment down will bind the bargain I wish to send infurniture without delay Two or three times during this short address, the cherub address had made chubby motions towards a chair The gentleman now took it, laying a hesitating hand on a corner of the table And with another hesitating hand lifting the crown of his hat to his lips and drawing it before his mouth "The gentleman, R.W.," said Mrs. Wilfer, "proposes to take your apartments by the quarter, a quarter's notice on either side" "Shall I mention, sir?" Incinuated the landlord, expecting it to be received as a matter of course, the form of a reference "I think," returned the gentleman after a pause, "that a reference is not necessary "Now I dare to say the truth is it convenient, for I am a stranger in London "I require no reference from you, and perhaps, therefore, you will require none from me "That will be fair on both sides" "Indeed, I show the greater confidence of the two, for I will pay an advance, whatever you please, and I am going to trust my furniture here "Whereas, if you were in embarrassed circumstances, this is merely suppositicious "Conchions courting R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs. Wilfer from a corner, she always got into stately corners, came to the rescue with a deep-toned, perfectly "Why, then, I might lose it" "Well," observed R. Wilfer cheerfully, "money and goods are certainly the best of references" "Do you think they are the best par?" asked Miss Bella in a low voice, and without looking over her shoulder, she warmed her foot on the fender "Among the best, my dear" "I should have thought myself, it was so easy to add the usual kind of one," said Bella, with a toss of her curls "The gentleman listened to her with the face of marked attention, though he neither looked up nor changed his attitude "He sat, still and silent, until his future landlord accepted his proposals and brought writing materials to complete the business "He sat, still and silent, while the landlord wrote" "When the agreement was ready in duplicate, the landlord having worked at it like some cherubic scribe in what is conventionally called 'a doubtful' "Which means a not at all doubtful, old master" Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites, plus save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a Plenty and more "Come back for new deals rotating every week, don't miss out on savings, shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh, select varieties" As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles, plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels "Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel" Card issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply "It was signed by the contracting parties, Bella looking on a scornful witness, the contracting parties were our Wilfa and John Rokesmith asquirer" "When it came to Bella's turn to sign her name, Mr. Rokesmith, who was standing as he had sat with a hesitating hand upon the table, looked at her stealthily, but narrowly, he looked at the pretty figure bending down over the paper and saying "Where am I to go, Pa? Here, in this corner?" "He looked at the beautiful brown hair, shading the coquettish face, he looked at the free dash of the signature, which was a bold one for a woman's, and then they looked at one another" "Much obliged to you, Miss Wilfa" "Aplied?" "I have given you so much trouble" "Signing my name?" "Yes, certainly, but I am your landlord's daughter, sir" "As there was nothing more to do but pay eight sovereigns an earnest of the bargain, pocket the agreement, a point of time for the arrival of his furniture in himself and go, Mr. Rokesmith did that, as awkwardly as it might be done, and was escorted by his landlord to the outer air" "When R Wilfa returned, candlestick in hand, to the bosom of his family, he found the bosom agitated" "Pah" said Bella, "we have got a murderer for attendant" "Pah" said Livigner, "we have got a robber to see him and able for his life to look anybody in the face" said Bella, "they never wore such an exhibition" "My dears," said their farmer, "here's a different gentleman and I should say particularly so in the society of girls of your age" "Nonsense, our age" cried Bella impatiently "what's that got to do with him?" "Besides, we are not of the same age, which age?" demanded Livigner "Never you mind, Levy" retorted Bella, "you wait till you are of an age to ask such questions" "Pah" marked my words, "between Mr. Rokesmith and me there is a natural antipathy and a deep distrust and something will come of it" "My dear and girls" said the cherub patriarch "between Mr. Rokesmith and me there is a matter of eight sovereigns and something for supper shall come of it if you will agree upon the article" "This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in the Wilfa household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch cheese at ten o'clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella" Indeed the modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety and generally came before the family in a state of apologetic perspiration After some discussion on the relative merits of veal cutlet, sweet bread and lobster, a decision was pronounced in favour of veal cutlet. Mrs. Wilfa then solemnly divested herself of her handkerchief and glows as a preliminary sacrifice to preparing the frying pan And R.W. himself went out to purchase the V-End He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh cabbage leaf where it coily embraced a rasher of ham The loadiest sounds were not long in rising from the frying pan on the fire, or in seaming as the fire light danced in the mellow holes of a couple of full bottles on the table to play appropriate dance music The cloth was laid by Lavi, Bella, as the acknowledged ornament of the family, employed both her hands and giving her hair an additional wave, while sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally threw in a direction touching the supper as "Very brown, Ma!" ought to her sister, "put the salt cellar straight, Miss, and don't be a dowdy little puss" Meantime, her father, chinking Mr. Rokesmith's gold as he sat expectant between his knife and fork, remarked that six of those sovereigns came just in time for their landlord, and stood them a little pile on the white tablecloth to look at "I hate our landlord," said Bella, "but observing a fall in her father's face," she went and sat down by him at the table and began touching up his hair with the handle of a fork. It was one of the girls' spoilt ways to be always arranging the family's hair, perhaps because her own was so pretty, and occupied so much of her attention "You deserve to have a house of your own, don't you, poor Pa?" "I don't deserve it better than another, my dear." "At any rate, I, for one, want it more than another," said Bella, holding him by the chin, as she stuck his flaxen hair on end, "and I grudge this money going to the monster that swallows up so much, when we all want everything!" Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, A Plenty, and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. And if you say, as you want to say, I know you want to say so, Pa. That's neither reasonable nor honest, Bella. Then I answer, maybe not Pa, very likely, but it's one of the consequences of being poor, and thoroughly hating and detesting to be poor, and that's my case. Now you look lovely, Pa. Why didn't you always wear your hair like that? And here's the cutlet. If it isn't very brown, Ma, I can't eat it and must have a bit put back to be done expressly. However, as it was brown, even to Bella's taste, the young lady graciously partook of it without re-consignment to the frying pan, and also in due course of the contents of the two bottles, or of one held Scotch ale and the other rum. The latter perfume, with the fostering aid of boiling water and lemon peel, diffused itself throughout the room, and became so highly concentrated around the warm fireside, that the wind passing over the house roof must have rushed off charge of the delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee at that particular chimney pot. "Pah-ah," said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite ankle, "when old Mr. Harmon made such a fool of me, not to mention himself, as he is dead, what do you suppose he did it for?" "Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words of the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded, for he certainly did it." "And I was stamping my foot and screaming when he first looked notice of me, was I?" said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned. "You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your little voice and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you had snatched off for the purpose," returned her father, as if the remembrance gave a relish to the rum. "You were doing this one Sunday morning when I took you out, because I didn't go the exact way you wanted. When the old gentleman sitting on a seat near said, 'That's a nice girl, that's a very nice girl, a promising girl.' And so you were, my dear." "And then he asked my name, did he, Pa?" "Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine. And on another Sunday mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and, and really, that's all." As that was all the rum and water, too, or, in other words, as R.W. delicately signified that his glass was empty by throwing back his head and standing the glass upside down on his nose and up a lip, it might have been charitable, in Mrs. Wilfer, to suggest replenishment. But that heroine, briefly suggesting bedtime, instead, the bottles were put away and the family retired. She, terribly escorted, like some severe saint in a painting, or merely human matron allegorically treated. "And by this time, to-morrow," said Lavinia, when the two girls were alone in their room, "we shall have Mr. Voke Smith here, and shall be expecting to have our throats cut." "Who needn't a stand between me and the candle for all that?" retorted Bella. "This is another of the consequences of being poor. The idea of a girl was a really fine head of hair having to do it by one flat candle and a few inches of looking glass." "You caught George Simpson with it, Bella. Bad as your means of dressing it are." "You're low little thing. Caught George Simpson with it. Don't talk about catching people, miss, till your own time for catching, as you call it, comes." "Perhaps it has come," muttered Lavinia with a toss of her head. "What did you say?" asked Bella very sharply. "What did you say, Miss?" Lavinia, declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually lapsed over her hair dressing into a silhouette on the miseries of being poor. As I exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a commodious dressing table, and being obliged to take in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance, as her climax, she laid great stress and might have laid greater had she known that if Mr. Julius Hanford had a twin brother upon Earth, Mr. John Rokesmith was the man. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, A Plenty, and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. End of Book 1, Chapter 4. Chapter 4, The R. Wilfer Family. Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance, brasses and country churches, scrolls and stained glass windows, and generally the doofers who came over with the conqueror. For it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no "D" anyone's ever came over with anybody else. But the Reginald Wilfer family would have such commonplace extraction and pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modestly subsisted on the docks, the excise office and the custom house, and the existing R. Wilfer was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained a modest object of his ambition, which was to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included at one time. His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat. His pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots. His boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed in an ancient ruin of various periods. If the conventional cherub could ever grow up and be clothed, he might be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, innocent appearance was a reason for his being always treated with condescension when he was not put down. A stranger entering his own poor house at about ten o'clock p.m. might have been surprised to find him sitting up to supper. So boyish was he and his curves and proportions that his old schoolmaster meeting him in cheap side might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot. In short, he was the conventional cherub, after the supposititious chute just mentioned, rather grey, with signs of care on his expression and indecidedly insolvent circumstances. He was shy and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as being too aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he used only the initial R, and imparted what it really stood for to none but chosen friends under the seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious habit had arisen in the neighbourhood surrounding mincing lane of making Christian names for him of adjectives and participles, beginning with R. Some of these were more or less appropriate, as rusty, retiring, vuddy, round, vipe, ridiculous, ruminative. Others derived their point from their want of application, as raging, rattling, roaring, rafish. But his popular name was Rumpty, which in a moment of inspiration had been bestowed upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits connected with the drug markets, as the beginning of a social chorus. His leading part in the execution of which had led this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of which the whole expressive burden ran, "Rumpty, Ittity, Row-dow-dow, sing toodly, teedly, bow-wow-wow." Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business, as dear Rumpty, in answer to which he sedately signed himself, yours truly, R. Wilfer. He was Clark in the drug house of chicksy veneering and stobbles. Chicksy and stobbles, his former masters, had both become absorbed in veneering, once their traveller or commission agent, who had signalised his accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity of plate glass window, and French polished mahogany partition, and a gleaming and enormous door plate. R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and putting his bunch of keys in his pocket, much as if it were his peg-top, made for home. His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge, and that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt, was a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head. "No, me," said he, "what might have been his not-what-is." With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it, not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his journey. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, A Plenty, and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week, don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh, select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman, and an angular. Her lord being cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the principle which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much given to tying up her head in a pocket handkerchief, knotted under the chin. This headgear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves worn within doors, she seemed to consider as at once a kind of armour against misfortune, invariably assuming it when in low spirits or difficulties. And as a species of full dress, it was therefore with some sinking of the spirit that her husband beheld her thus heroically attired, putting down her candle in the little hall and coming down the doorsteps to the little front court to open the gate for him. Something had gone wrong with the house door, for our Wilfer stopped on the steps, staring at it, and cried, "Huh, no?" "Yes," said Mrs Wilfer. The man came himself with a pair of pincers and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid for it, and as he had an order for another lady's school door plate, it was better, burnished up, for the interest of all parties. "Perhaps it was, is my dear? What do you think?" "You are master here, R.W." returned his wife. "It is as you think, not as I do; perhaps it might have been better if the man had taken the door to." "My dear, we couldn't have done without the door." "Couldn't we?" "Why, my dear, could we?" "It is as you think, R.W., not as I do." With those submissive words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half kitchen, half parlor, where a girl of about nineteen with an exceedingly pretty figure and face; but with an impatient and petalant expression both in her face and in her shoulders, which in her sex at her age are very expressive of discontent, sat playing drafts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the house of Wilfer. Not to encamber this page by telling off the Wilfer's in detail and casting them up in the gross. It is enough for the present that the rest were what is called out in the world, in various ways, and that they were many. So many, that when one of his dutiful children called in to see him, R. Wilfer generally seemed to say to himself after little mental arithmetic, "Oh, here's another of him, before adding aloud, 'How do you do, John?' or Susan, as the case might be." "Well, piggy-wiggies," said R.W. "How do you do tonight?" "What I was thinking of, my dear," to Mrs. Wilfer, already seated in the corner with folded gloves, was that as we have let our first law so well, and as we have now no place in which you could teach pupils, even if pupils, the milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest respectability who were in search of a suitable establishment and he took a card. Interposed, Mrs. Wilfer, with severe monotony, as if she were reading an act of Parliament aloud, tell your father whether it was last Monday, Bella. "But we never heard any more of it, Ma," said Bella, the elder girl. "In addition to which, my dear," her husband urged, "if you have no place to put two young persons into, pardon me," Mrs. Wilfer again interposed, "they were not young persons, two young ladies that the highest respectability tell your father, Bella, whether the milkman said so." "My dear, it is the same thing." "No, it is not," said Mrs. Wilfer, with the same impressive monotony, "pardon me." "I mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space, as to space. If you have no space in which to put two youthful fellow creatures, however eminently respectable which I do not doubt, where are those youthful fellow creatures to be accommodated?" "I carry it no further than that, and solely looking at it," said her husband, making the stipulation at once in a conciliatory, complimentary and argumentative tone, "as I am sure you will agree, my love, from a fellow creature point of view, my dear." "I have nothing more to say," returned Mrs. Wilfer, with a meek, renunciatory action of her gloves. "It is as you think, R.W., not as I do." Here the huffing of Miss Bella, and the loss of three of her men at a swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young lady's jerking the draft board and pieces off the table, which her sister went down on her knees to pick up. "Poor Bella!" said Mrs. Wilfer. "And, poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear," suggested R.W. "Pardon me," said Mrs. Wilfer. "No." It was one of the worthy woman's specialities that she had an amazing power of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling her own family, which she thus proceeded, in the present case, to do. "No, R.W. Lavinia has not known the trial that Bella has known. The trial that your daughter Bella has undergone is perhaps without a parallel, and has been born, I will say, nobly. When you see your daughter Bella in her black dress, which she alone of all the family wears, and when you remember the circumstances which have led to her wearing it, and when you know how these circumstances have been sustained, then R.W. lay your head upon your pillow and say, "Poor Lavinia!" Here, Mrs. Lavinia, from her kneeling situation under the table, put in that she didn't want to be "poured" by power, or anybody else. "I am sure you do not, my dear," returned her mother, "for you have a fine, brave spirit, and your sister Cecilia has a fine, brave spirit of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beautiful spirit. The self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character very seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now in my pocket a letter from your sister Cecilia, received this morning, received three months after her marriage, poor child, in which she tells me that her husband must unexpectedly shelter under their roof, and has reduced art. "But I will be true to him, mama," she touchingly writes, "I will not leave him, I must not forget that he is my husband. Let his aunt come." "If this is not pathetic, if this is not woman's devotion," the good lady waved her gloves in a sense of the impossibility of saying more, and tied the pocket handkerchief over her head in a tighter knot under her chin. Bella, who is now seated on the rug to warm herself, with her brown eyes on the fire, and a handful of brown curls in her mouth, laughed at this, and then pouted and half-cried. "I am sure," said she, "though you have no feeling for me, Pa. I am one of the most unfortunate girls that ever lived. You know how poor we are?" "It is probably he did, having some reason to know it." "And what a glimpse of wealth I had, and how it melted away, and how I am here in this ridiculous morning which I hate. A kind of a widow who never was married, and yet you don't feel for me." "Yes you do, yes you do." This abrupt change was occasioned by her father's face. She stopped to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favourable to strangulation, and to give him a kiss and a pat or two on the cheek. "But you ought to feel for me, you know, Pa?" "My dear, I do." "Yes, and I say you ought to. If they had only left me alone and told me nothing about it, it would have mattered much less. But that nasty Mr. Lightwood feels at his duty, as he says, to write and tell me what is in reserve for me. And then I am obliged to get rid of George Sampson." Here, Levenia, rising to the surface with the last draughtman rescued, interposed, "You never cared for George Sampson Beller?" "And did I say I did miss?" "And pouting again, with the curls in her mouth?" "George Sampson was very fond of me, and admired me very much, and put up with everything I did to him." "You were rude enough to him?" Levenia again interposed. "And did I say I wasn't miss? I'm not setting up to be sentimental about George Sampson. I only say George Sampson was better than nothing. You didn't show him that you thought even that." Levenia again interposed. "You are a chit and a little idiot," returned Beller, "or you wouldn't make such a dolly speech. What did you expect me to do? Wait till you are a woman, and don't talk about what you don't understand. You only show your ignorance." Then, whimpering again, and at intervals biting the curls and stopping to look how much was bitten off, "It's a shame. There never was such a hard case. I shouldn't care so much if it wasn't so ridiculous. It was ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me, whether he liked it or not. It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrassing meeting it would be, and how we never could pretend to have an inclination of our own, either of us. It was ridiculous enough to know I shouldn't like him. How could I like him? Left to him in a will, like a dozen spoons, with everything cut and dried beforehand like orange chips? Talk of orange flowers, indeed. I declare again it's a shame. Those ridiculous points would have been smoothed away by the money. For I love money, and want money. Want it dreadfully? I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor. Offensively poor, miserably poor. Beastly poor. But here I am. Left with all the ridiculous parts of the situation remaining, and to them all, this ridiculous dress. And if the truth was known, when the Harmon murder was all over the town, and people were speculating on its being suicide, I dare say those impotent wretches at the clubs and places made jokes about the miserable creatures having preferred a watery grave to me. It's likely enough it took such liberties. I shouldn't wonder. I declare it a very hard case indeed, and I am a most unfortunate girl. The idea of being a kind of a widow, and never having been married. And the idea of being as poor as ever after all, and going into black besides for a man I never saw, and should have hated as far as he was concerned, if I had seen. The young lady's lamentations were checked at this point by a knuckle-knocking at the half-open door of the room. The knuckle had knocked two or three times already, but had not been heard. "Who is it?" said Mrs. Wilfer in her act of Parliament Manor. "Enter." A gentleman coming in, Miss Bella, with a short and sharp exclamation, scrambled off the hearth rug and masked the bitten curls together in their right place on her neck. The servant girl had her key in the door as I came up, and directed me to this room, telling me I was expected. I am afraid I should have asked her to announce me. "Pardon me," returned Mrs. Wilfer, "not at all. Two of my daughters are W. This is the gentleman who has taken your first floor. He was so good as to make an appointment for tonight, when you would be at home." A dark gentleman, thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say, handsome face. A very bad manner. In the last degree, constrained, reserved, difficult, troubled. His eyes were on Miss Bella for an instant, and then looked at the ground as he addressed the master of the house. Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr. Wilfer, with the rooms and with their situation and with their price, I suppose a memorandum between us of two or three lines and a payment down will bind a bargain. I wish to send in furniture without delay. Two or three times, during this short address, the cherub addressed had made chubby motions towards a chair. The gentleman now took it, laying a hesitating hand on a corner of the table, and with another hesitating hand, lifting the crown of his hat to his lips and drawing it before his mouth. The gentleman, R.W., said Mrs. Wilfer, proposes to take your apartments by the quarter, a quarter's notice on either side. Shall I mention, sir, insinuated the landlord, expecting it to be received as a matter of course, the form of a reference? I think, return the gentleman after a pause, that a reference is not necessary. Now, there to say the truth is it convenient, for I am a stranger in London. I require no reference from you, and perhaps, therefore, you will require none from me. That will be fair on both sides. Indeed, I show the greater confidence of the two, where I will pay in advance whatever you please, and I am going to trust my furniture here. Whereas, if you were in embarrassed circumstances, this is merely a supposititious. Conscience courting R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs. Wilfer from a corner, she always got into stately corners, came to the rescue with a deep-toned, perfectly. Why, then, I might lose it. Well, observed R. Wilfer cheerfully, money and goods are certainly the best of references. Do you think they are the best par? Ask Miss Beller, and a low voice, and without looking over her shoulder as she warmed her foot on the fender? Among the best, my dear. I should have thought myself. It was so easy to add the usual kind of one. Said Beller, with the toss of her curls. The gentleman listened to her with the face of marked attention, though he neither looked up nor changed his attitude. He sat still and silent, until his future landlord accepted his proposals and brought writing materials to complete the business. He sat still and silent, while the landlord wrote. When the agreement was ready in duplicate, the landlord having worked at it like some cherubic scribe in what is conventionally called "a doubtful", which means "a not at all doubtful, old master". Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favourites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon Brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a Plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. It was signed by the contracting parties, Bella looking on a scornful witness. The contracting parties were R. Wilfer and John Rokesmith Asquirer. When it came to Bella's turn to sign her name, Mr. Rokesmith, who was standing as he had sat with a hesitating hand upon the table, looked at her stealthily, but narrowly. He looked at the pretty figure bending down over the paper and saying, "Where am I to go, Pa? Here, in this corner?" He looked at the beautiful brown hair, shading the coquetish face. He looked at the free dash of the signature, which was a bold one for a woman's, and then they looked at one another. Much obliged to you, Miss Wilfer. Obliged? I have given you so much trouble. Signing my name? Yes, certainly. But I am your landlord's daughter, sir. As there was nothing more to do but pay eight sovereigns and earnest of the bargain, pocket the agreement, appoint a time for the arrival of his furniture in himself, and go, Mr. Rokesmith did that, as awkwardly as it might be done, and was escorted by his landlord to the outer air. When R. Wilfer returned, candlestick in hand, to the bosom of his family, he found the bosom agitated. "Pah!" said Bella, "we have got a murderer for a tenant." "Pah!" said Livigner, "we have got a robber!" "To see him, unable for his life to look anybody in the face!" said Bella, "there never was such an exhibition." "My dears!" said their farmer. "Here's a different gentleman, and I should say particularly so, in the society of girls of your age." "Nonsense! Our age!" cried Bella impatiently. "What's that got to do with him?" "Besides, we are not of the same age. Which age?" demanded Livigner. "Never you mind, Levy!" retorted Bella. "You wait till you are of an age to ask such questions." "Pah!" marked my words. Between Mr. Rooksmith and me, there is a natural antipathy and a deep distrust, and something will come of it. "My dear and girls!" said the cherub patriarch. "Between Mr. Rooksmith and me, there is a matter of eight sovereigns, and something for supper shall come of it, if you will agree upon the article." This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject. Treats being rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch cheese at ten o'clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed, the modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the family in a state of apologetic perspiration. After some discussion on the relative merits of veal cutlet, sweet bread, and lobster, a decision was pronounced in favour of veal cutlet. Mrs. Wilfer then solemnly divested herself of her handkerchief and gloms as a preliminary sacrifice to preparing the frying pan, and R.W. himself went out to purchase the veand. He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh cabbage-leaf, where it coily embraced a rasher of ham. The loadiest sounds were not long in rising from the frying pan on the fire, or in seeming, as the fire light danced in the mellow halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to play appropriate dance music. The cloth was laid by Lavi, Bella, as the acknowledged ornament of the family, employed both her hands in giving her hair an additional wave, while sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally threw in a direction touching the supper as "Very brown, ma!" or to her sister, "Put the salt cellar straight, Miss, and don't be a dowdy little puss." Meantime, her father, chinking Mr. Roke Smith's gold as he sat expectant between his knife and fork, remarked that six of those sovereigns came just in time for their landlord, and stood them a little pile on the white tablecloth to look at. "I hate our landlord," said Bella, "but observing a fall in her father's face," she went and sat down by him at the table, and began touching up his hair with the handle of a fork. It was one of the girls' spoilt ways to be always arranging the family's hair, perhaps because her own was so pretty, and occupied so much of her attention. "You deserve to have a house of your own, don't you, poor Pa?" "I don't deserve it better than another, my dear." "At any rate, I, for one, want it more than another," said Bella, holding him by the chin as she stuck his flaxen hair on end. "And I grudge this money going to the monster that swallows up so much, when we all want everything. And if you say, as you want to say, I know you want to say so, Pa, that's neither reasonable nor honest, Bella, then I answer, maybe not Pa very likely, but it's one of the consequences of being poor, and of thoroughly hating and detesting to be poor, and that's my case." "Now you look lovely, Pa, why don't you always wear your hair like that? And here's the cutlet. If it isn't very brown, ma, I can't eat it, and must have a bit put back to be done expressly." However, as it was brown, even to Bella's taste, the young lady graciously partook of it without re-consignment to the frying pan, and also in due course of the contents of the two bottles, or of one held scotch ale and the other rum. The latter perfume, with the fostering aid of boiling water and lemon peel, diffused itself throughout the room, and became so highly concentrated around the warm fireside, that the wind passing over the house roof must have rushed off charge of the delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee at that particular chimney pot. "Pah!" said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite ankle. "When old Mr. Harmon made such a fool of me, not to mention himself, as he is dead, what do you suppose he did it for?" "Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words of the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded, for he certainly did it." "And I was stamping my foot and screaming when he first took notice of me, was I?" said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned. "You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your little voice and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you had snatched off for the purpose," returned her father, as if the remembrance gave a relish to the rum. "You were doing this one Sunday morning when I took you out, because I didn't go the exact way you wanted. When the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said, 'That's a nice girl, that's a very nice girl, a promising girl.' And so you were, my dear." "And then he asked my name, did he, Pa?" "Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine. And on another Sunday mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and, and really, that's all." As that was all the rum and water, too, or, in other words, as R.W. delicately signified that his glass was empty, by throwing back his head and standing the glass upside down on his nose and up a lip, it might have been charitable, in Mrs. Wilfer, to suggest replenishment. But that heroine, briefly suggesting bedtime, instead, the bottles were put away, and the family retired. She, cherubically escorted, like some severe saint in a painting, or merely human matron allegorically treated. "And by this time, tomorrow," said Lavigna, when the two girls were alone in their room, "we shall have Mr. Roke Smith here, and shall be expecting to have our throats cut." "Who needn't the stand between me and the candle for all that?" retorted Bella. "This is another of the consequences of being poor. The idea of a girl with a really fine head of hair having to do it by one flat candle and a few inches of looking glass." "You caught George Simpson with it, Bella. Bad as your means of dressing it are." "Your little thing." "Caught George Simpson with it. Don't talk about catching people miss till your own time for catching, as you call it comes." "Perhaps it has come," muttered Lavigna with a toss of her head. "What did you say?" asked Bella very sharply. "What did you say, Miss?" Lavi, declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually lapsed over her hair dressing into a silhouette on the miseries of being poor. As I exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress out instead of a commodious dressing table, and being obliged to take in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance, as her climax, she laid great stress and might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr. Julius Hanford had a twin brother upon Earth, Mr. John Rokesmith was the man. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon Brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. End of Book 1, Chapter 4. Chapter 5, Boffin's Bower. Over against a London house, a corner house, not far from Cavendish Square, a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with his remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living on this wise. Every morning at 8 o'clock, he stumped to the corner, carrying a chair, a clothes horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the board and trestles became a counter. The basket supplied a few small lots of fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a foot warmer. The unfolded clothes horse displayed a choice collection of haypony ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within it became his post for the rest of the day. All weathers saw the man at the post. This is to be accepted in a double sense, for he contrived a back to his wooden stool at placing it against the lamppost. When the weather was wet, he put up his umbrella over his stockin' trade, not over himself. When the weather was dry, he felled that faded article, tied it round with a piece of yarn, and laid it crosswise under the trestles, where it looked like an unwholesomely forced lettuce that had lost in colour and crispness what it had gained in size. He had established his right to the corner by imperceptible prescription. He had never varied his ground an inch, but had in the beginning, diffidently taken the corner upon which the side of the house gave. A howling corner in the wintertime, a dusty corner in the summertime, an undesirable corner at the best of times. Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms there when the main street was at peace, and the water-card, as if it were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy when all else was clean. On the front of his sail-board, hung a little placard, like a kettle-holder, bearing the inscription in his own small text. Aaron's gone, on with thigh, delity by, ladies and gentlemen, I remain, your humble-served, Silas Weg. He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he was Aaron'd goer by appointment to the house at the corner, though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant's deputy, but also that he was one of the house's retainers, an old vassalage to it, and was bound to reel and loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as "our house," and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly speculative and all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. On similar grounds, he never beheld an inmate at any one of its windows, but he touched his hat. Yet he knew so little about the inmates, that he gave them names of his own invention, as Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, Uncle Parker, having no authority whatever for any such designations, but particularly the last, to which, as a natural consequence, he stuck with great obstinacy. Over the house itself he exercised the same imaginary powers as over its inhabitants and their affairs. He had never been in it, the length of a piece of fat, black water pipe which trailed itself over the area door into a damp stone passage, and a rather the air of a leech on the house that had taken wonderfully, but this was no impediment to his arranging it according to a plan of his own. It was a great dingy house, with a quantity of dim side window and blank peck premises, and it cost his mind a world a trouble so to lay it out as to account for everything in its external appearance. But this once done was quite satisfactory, and he rested persuaded that he knew his way about the house blindfold. From the barred garrets and the high roof to the two iron extinguishers before the main door, which seemed to request all lively visitors to have the kindness to put themselves out before entering. Assuredly, this stall of Silas wags was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face ache to look at his apples, the stomach ache to look at his oranges, the tooth ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penith appointed by Magna Carta. Whether from too much east wind or no, it was an easterly corner. The stall, the stock, and the keeper were all as dry as the desert. Weg was a naughty man, and a close grained, with a face carved out of very hard material that had just as much play of expression as a watchman's rattle. When he laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. So to say he was so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally, and rather suggested to the fanciful observer that he might be expected if his development received no untimely check to be completely set up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months. Mr. Weg was an observant person, or, as he himself said, took a powerful sight of notice. He saluted all his regular passes by every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamppost, and on the adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus to the rector he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church. To the doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with his inside, he begged respectfully to acknowledge. Before the quality he delighted to abase himself, and for Uncle Parker, who was in the army, at least so he had settled it, he put his open hand to the side of his hat in a military manner which that angry-eyed buttoned up inflammatory-faced old gentleman appeared but imperfectly to appreciate. The only article in which Silas dealt that was not hard was Gingerbread. On a certain day some wretched infant having purchased the damp Gingerbread horse, fearfully out of condition, and the adhesive bird cage which had been exposed for the day's sale, he had taken a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay of those dreadful specimens, and was going to look in at the lid when he said to himself, pausing, no, here you are again. The word referred to a broad round-shouldered one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, resting a pee overcoat and carrying a large stick. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, A Plenty, and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. He wore thick shoes and thick leather gators and thick gloves like a hedges. Both after his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks and his forehead and his eyelids and his lips and his ears, but with bright, eager, childishly enquiring grey eyes under his ragged eyebrows and broad-brimmed hat, a very odd-looking old fellow altogether. "Here you are again," repeated Mr. Wigg, musing. "And what are you now? Are you in the funds or where are you? Have you lately come to settle in this neighborhood or do you own to another neighborhood? Are you in independent circumstances or is it waste in the motions of a bow on you? Come, I'll speculate. I'll invest a bow in you." Which Mr. Wigg, having replaced his tinbox, accordingly did, as he rose to bait his gingerbread trap for some other devoted infant. The salute was acknowledged with, "Morning, sir, morning, morning!" "Calls me, sir," said Mr. Wigg to himself. "Eee, round answer, a bow gone. Morning, morning, morning!" "If he is to be rather arctic, old cock, too," said Mr. Wigg, as before. "Good morning to you, sir." "Do you remember me, then?" asked his new acquaintance, stopping in his amble, one-sided before the stall, and speaking in a pounding way, though with great good humour. "I have noticed you go past our house, sir, several times, in the course of the last week or so." "Oh, house!" repeated the other, meaning. "Yes," said Mr. Wigg, nodding as the other pointed the clumsy forefinger of his right glove at the corner-house. "Oh, now what?" pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive manner, carrying his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a baby. "What do they allow you now?" "It's a job-work that I do for our house," returned Silas dryly and with reticence. "It's not yet brought to an exact allowance." "Oh, it's not yet brought to an exact allowance!" "No, it's not yet brought to an exact allowance!" "Oh, morning, morning, morning!" "That appears to be rather a cracked old cock," thought Silas, qualifying his former good opinion as the other ambled off. "But, in a moment, he was back again with the question, 'How did you get your wooden leg?'" Mr. Wigg replied, "Tartly, to this personal inquiry, in an accident." "Do you like it?" "Well, I haven't got to keep it warm." Mr. Wigg made answer in a sort of desperation, occasioned by the singularity of the question. "He hasn't," repeated the other who was not at stick as he gave it a hug, "he hasn't got to keep it warm." "Did you have a hear of the name of Bothen?" "No," said Mr. Wigg, who was growing restive under this examination. "I never did hear the name of Bothen." "Do you like it?" "Why, no," bit ordered Mr. Wigg, again approaching desperation. "I can't say I do." "Why don't you like it?" "I don't know why I don't," bit ordered Mr. Wigg approaching frenzy. "But I don't at all." "No, I'll tell you something that'll make you sorry for that," said the stranger, smiling. "My name's Bothen." "I can't help it," returned Mr. Wigg, implying in his manner the offensive edition. "And if I could, I wouldn't." "But there's another chance for you," said Mr. Bothen, smiling still. "Do you like the name of Nicodemus?" "Think it over, Nick or Noddy?" "It is not, sir," Mr. Wigg rejoined as he sat down on his stool with an air of gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candor. "It is not a name as I could wish anyone that I had a respect for to call me by. "But there may be persons that would not view it with the same objections." "I don't know why," Mr. Wigg added, anticipating another question. "Noddy, Bothen," said that gentleman. "Noddy?" "That's my name." "Noddy or Nick, Bothen?" "What's your name?" "Sylus Wigg." "I don't," said Mr. Wigg, bestearing himself to take the same precautions before. "I don't know why, Silas, and I don't know why Wigg." "No, Wigg," said Mr. Bothen, hugging his stick closer. "I don't want to make a sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?" The wooden Wigg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a softened air, as describing possibility of profit. "Let me think. I ain't quite sure. Yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too." "Was it on a Monday morning when the butcher boy had beaten our house for orders and bought a ballad of me, which being unacrained with the tune I run it over to him?" "Right, Wigg. Right." "But he bought more than one." "Yes, to be sure, sir, and he bought several." After wishing to lay out his money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went over the collection together. To be sure we did. "Here was him as it might be, and he was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr. Bothen, as you identically are, with yourself same stick and your very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To be sure." Added Mr. Wigg, looking a little round Mr. Bothen, to take him in the rear, and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, your weary, self-same back. "What do you think I was doing, Wigg?" "I should judge, sir, you might be glancing your eye down the street." "No, Wigg. I was alistening." "Or as you, indeed," said Mr. Wigg, jubiously. "Not in a dishonorable way, Wigg, because you were singing to the butcher, and you wouldn't sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you know?" "It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of I, remembrance," said Mr. Wigg, cautiously. "But I might do it. A man can't say what he might wish to do some day or another. This not to release any little advantage he might derive from Mr. Bothen's of all." "Well," repeated Bothen, "I was alistening to you, and to him. And what do you--you haven't got another stool, have you--for rather thick of me breath?" "I haven't got another, but you're welcome to this," said Wigg, resigning it. "It's a treat to me to stand." "Lord," exclaimed Mr. Bothen, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he settled himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby. "It's up. Let's not place this, and then to be shut in on each side with these ballads like so many book-leaf blinkers. Why it's delightful!" "If I'm not mistaken, sir," Mr. Wigg delicately hinted, resting a hand on his stall, and bending over the discursive Bothen, "you alluded to some offer or another that was in your mind." "I'm coming to it. All right? I'm coming to it. I was going to say that when I listened that morning I listened with admiration and mounting to whore." "I thought to myself, is a man, with a wooden leg, a literary man, with not exactly so, sir," said Mr. Wigg. "Why, you know every one of these songs by name and by tune, and if you want to read or sing any one on him, off-strike, you've hung it on your spectacles and do it." "Well, sir," returned Mr. Wigg, with a conscious inclination of the head, "will say literary then." "A literary man, with a wooden leg, and all print is open to him. That's what I thought to myself that morning," pursued Mr. Boughton, leaning forward to describe uncramped by the clothes-horse as large an ark as his right arm could make, "all print is open to him, and it is, ain't it?" "Why, to me, sir," Mr. Wigg admitted, with modesty, "I believe you couldn't show me the piece of English print that I wouldn't be equal to Colerin and throw in." "On the spot," said Mr. Boughton, "on the spot. I knowed it. Then consider this, here am I, a man without a wooden leg, and yet all print is shut to me." "Indeed, sir," Mr. Wigg returned, with increasing self-complacency, "education neglected." "Nedlected," repeated Boughton, with emphasis, "there ain't no word for it. I don't mean to say, but what if you showed me at B? I could so far give you change for it as to why it's a Boughton." Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh, select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change terms apply. "Come, Cam, sir," said Mr. Weg, throwing in the little encouragement. "That's something, too." "It's something," answered Mr. Boughton, "but I'll take my oath, it ain't much." "Perhaps it's not as much as could be, wished by an enquirer in mind, sir," Mr. Weg admitted. "Now, look here, I'm retiring from business. He and Mrs. Boughton, Henry Ettie Boughton, which her father's name was Henry, and her mother's name was Ettie, and so you get it, we live on a competence, under the will of a diseased governor." "Gentlemen, dead, sir?" "Man alive! Don't I tell you? A diseased governor!" "Now, it's too late for me to begin shoveling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar books. I'm getting to be an old bird. I want to take it easy, but I want some reading. Some fine, bold reading, some splendid book in a gorgen lord-meir show of volumes. Probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas. As you'll reach right down your pipe of you, and take time to go by you." "How can I get that reading, Weg?" "Bye," tapping him on the breast of the head of his thick stick, "Pane a man truly qualified to do it. So much an hour. He utens to come and do it." "Ahem." "Flatted, sir, I'm sure," said Weg, beginning to regard himself in quite a new light. "Phew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir." "Yes. Do you like it?" "I am considering of it, Mr. Boffin." "I don't," said Boffin, in a free-handed manner, "want to tie a little bit." To a man with a wooden leg, down too tight, "I'll hate me an hour, shaunt-parters. The hours you're out to choose. After you've done for the day with your house here, I'll live over Maiden Laneway, out all the way direction, and you've only got to go east and by north when you've finished here, and you're there." "Tappens hate me an hour," said Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket and getting off the stool to work the sun on the top of it in his own way. Two longins and a shorten, "Tappens hate me, two shuttons is a longin, and two longins is four longins, making five longins six nights a week at five longins a night, scoring them all down separately, and you mount up to thirty longins, around and off a crayon." And into this result, as a large and satisfactory one, Mr. Boffin smeared it out with his moisten glove and sat down on the remains. "Half a crown," said Wegg, meditating, "yes, it ain't much, sir, half a crown." "Per week, you know." "Per week." "Yes." "As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now." "Or do you think in at all of poetry," Mr. Wegg inquired, musing, "would it come dearer?" Mr. Boffin asked. "It would come dearer," Mr. Wegg returned, "for when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right you should expect to be paid for its week in an effect on his mind." "To tell you the truth, Wegg," said Boffin, "I wasn't thinking of poetry, except in so far as this. If he was a weapon now and then to feel yourself in the mind to tip me in Mrs. Boffin one of your balance, why then we should drop it in the poetry?" "I folly, yes, sir," said Wegg. "But not being a regular musical professional, I should be loathe to engage myself for that, and therefore, when I dropped it in the poetry, I should ask to be considered so for in the light of a friend." At this Mr. Boffin's eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by the hand, protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he took it very kindly indeed. "What do you think of the terms, Wegg?" Mr. Boffin then demanded, with unconcealed anxiety, Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner, and who had begun to understand his man very well, replied with an air, as if he were saying something extraordinarily generous and great, "Mr. Boffin, I never bargain." "So I should have thought of you," said Mr. Boffin admiringly. "No, sir, I never did, Agile, and I never will, Agile; consequently, army, you at once, free and fair, with done for double the money." Mr. Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but assented, with the remark, "You know better what it ought to be than I do, Wegg," and again shook hands with him upon it. "Could you begin tonight, Wegg?" he then demanded, "Yes, sir," said Mr. Wegg carefully to leave all the eagerness to him, "I see now difficulty, if you wish it. You are provided with the needful implement, a book, sir?" "Bought him at a sale," said Mr. Boffin, "eight volumes, red and gold, purple ribbon and every volume, to kick the place where you leave off. Do you know him?" "The book's name, sir," inquired Silas. "All I thought you might have known him without it," said Mr. Boffin, slightly disappointed. "His name is Decline and Fall Off The Ruchen Empire." Mr. Boffin went over these stones slowly, and with much caution. "I, indeed," said Mr. Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly recognition. "You know him, Wegg?" "I haven't been, not to say, right slap, through him very lately," Mr. Wegg made answer. "I haven't been otherwise employed, Mr. Boffin, but know him? Oh, familiar, declarining and falling off the ruchen? Rather, sir. Ever since I was not so I as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left our cottage to enlist into the army, on which occasion, as the ballad that was made about it describes, "Besides that cottage door, Mr. Boffin, a girl was on her knees. She held aloft a snowy scarf, sir, which, my eldest brother noticed, flattered in the breeze. She breathed a prayer for him, Mr. Boffin, a prayery cooed naughtier, and my eldest brother leaned upon his sword, Mr. Boffin, and wiped away a tear." Much impressed by this family circumstance, and also by the friendly disposition of Mr. Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon dropping into poetry, Mr. Boffin again shook hands with that lignious sharper, and besought him to name his hour, Mr. Wegg, named eight. "Where I live," said Mr. Boffin, "is called the ballad. Boffin's ballad is the name Mrs. Boffin christened it, when we came into it as a property. If you should meet with anybody that don't know it by that name, which hardly anybody does, when you've got nigh upon about an odd mile or say in a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Betelbridge, ask for Armany jail, and you be put right. I shall expect you, Wegg," said Mr. Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the greatest enthusiasm, "most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till you come. Print is now opening ahead of me. This night a literary man, with a wooden leg!" he bestowed an admiring look upon that decoration, as if it greatly enhanced the relish of Mr. Wegg's attainment, "will begin to lead me a new life. My fist again, Wegg, mornin, mornin, mornin." Left alone at his stall, as he other ambled off, Mr. Wegg subsided into his screen, produced a small pocket-hangerchief of a penitentially scrubbing character, and took himself by the nose with a thoughtful aspect. Also, while he still grasped that feature, he directed several thoughtful looks down the street after the retiring figure of Mr. Boffin; but profound gravity sat enthroned on Wegg's countenance. For, while he considered, within himself, that this was an old fellow of rare simplicity, that this was an opportunity to be improved, and that here might be money to be got beyond present calculation, still he compromised himself by no admission that his new engagement was at all out of his way or involved the least element of the ridiculous. Mr. Wegg would even have picked a handsome quarrel with anyone who should have challenged his deeper quaintance with those of four said eight volumes of decline and fall. His gravity was unusual, portentous and immeasurable, not because he admitted any doubt of himself, but because he perceived it necessary to forestall any doubt of himself and others; and herein he ranged with that very numerous class of imposters, who are quite as determined to keep up appearances to themselves as to their neighbours. A certain loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr. Wegg, the condescending sense of being in request as an official expander of mysteries. It did not move him to commercial greatness, but rather to littleness, in so much that if it had been within the possibilities of things for the wooden measure to hold fewer nuts than usual, it would have done so that day. But when night came, and with her veiled eyes beheld him stumping towards Boughan's bower, he was elated too. The bower was as difficult to find as fair rozzamans without the clue. Mr. Wegg, having reached the quarter indicated, inquired for the bower half a dozen times that the least success, until he remembered to ask for harmony jail. This occasion to quick change in the spirits of a horse-gentleman and a donkey whom he had much perplexed. "Why, you mean old almonds, do you?" said the horse-gentleman, who was driving his donkey in a truck with a carrot for a whip. "Why didn't you never say so? Headed in me as I go in by him. Jump in!" Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. Mr. Wedge complied, and the horse-gentleman invited his attention to the third person and company, thus. "Now, you look at Edder's ears. What was it, as you named again? Whisper." Mr. Wedge whispered, "Boffin's bower." "Edder it. Keep your eye on his ears. Cut away to Boffin's bower." Edder with his ears lying back remained immovable. "Edder it. Keep your eye on his ears. Cut away to old almonds." Eddwood instantly pricked up his ears to their utmost and rattled off at such a pace as Mr. Wedge's conversation was jolted out of him in a most dislocated state. "Was it ever for a jail?" asked Mr. Wedge, holding on. "You're a proper jail. What you and me will get committed to?" returned his escort. "They'd give the name on accounts of old almonds living solitary there." "And why did they call it "harm money?" asked Wedge. "All accounts of these never agree in with nobody, like the speeches of chaff. Almonds jail. Almondy jail. Workin' it round like." "Do you know, Miss Edder? Uh, Boffin?" asked Wedge. "I should think so. Everybody do about here? Edder knows him. Keep your eye on his ears. Naughty Boffin! Edderd!" The effect of the name was so very alarming. In respect of causing a temporary disappearance of Edward's head, casting his hind hoofs in the air, greatly accelerating the pace and increasing the jolting, that Mr. Wedge was feigned to devote his attention exclusively to holding on, and to relinquish his desire of ascertaining whether his homage to Boffin was to be considered complementary, or the reverse. Presently Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wedge discreetly lost no time in slipping out at the back of the truck. The moment he was landed, his late driver with a wave of the carrot said, "Sucker, Edderd!" and he, the hind hoofs, the truck and Edward all seemed to fly into the air together and a kind of apotheosis. Pushing the gate which stood ajar, Wedge looked into an enclosed space where certain tall, dark mounds rose high against the sky, and where the pathway to the bower was indicated, as the moonlight showed between two lines of broken crockery set in ashes. A white figure advancing along this path proved to be nothing more ghostly than Mr. Boffin, only attired to the pursuit of knowledge in an undress garment of short white smock-frock. Having received his literary friend with great cordiality, he conducted him to the interior of the bower, and there presented him to Mrs. Boffin. A stout lady, of a rubiconed and cheerful aspect, dressed to Mr. Wedge's consternation, in a low evening dress of sable satin and a large black velvet hat and feathers. "Mrs. Boffin, Wedge," said Boffin, "is a high flier at fashion, and her mate is such that she does it credit. As to be self, I ain't yet as fashionable as I may come to be. Henry Eddy, old lady, this is the gentleman that is going to decline and fall off the Russian Empire. "And I'm sure I hope it'll do you both good," said Mrs. Boffin. It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur taproom than anything else within the can of Silas Wedge. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one in each side of it with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes arranged flat in a row like a galvanic battery. On the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances of Mr. Wedge over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a foot stool, and a little table formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and colour, but were expensive articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendant from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor, but, instead of reaching to the fire-side, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boffin's foot-stool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr. Wedge also noticed with admiring eyes that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow ornamentation as stuffed birds and wax and fruits under glass shades, there were in the most territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves, on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low, and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country. "Do you like it, Wedge?" asked Mr. Boffin, in his pouncing manner. "I admire it greatly, sir," said Wedge. "Bequirly a comfort at this fire-side, sir." "Do you understand it, Wedge?" "Why, in a general way, sir?" Mr. Wedge was beginning slowly and knowingly with his head stuck on one side, as a vase as the people do begin when the other cut in short. "You don't understand it, Wedge, and I'll explain it. These arrangements is made by mutual consent between Mrs. Boffin and me. Mrs. Boffin, as I mentioned, is a high flier at fashion. At present, I'm not. I don't go higher than comfort, and comfort of the sort that I'm equal to the enjoyment of. Well, then, where would be the good of Mrs. Boffin and me quarrels over it? We never did quarrel before we came into Boffin's power as a property. Why quarrel? And we have come into Boffin's power as a property. So, Mrs. Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room in her way. I keep up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which we have at once, sociability. I should go melancholy and mad without Mrs. Boffin, fashion and comfort. If I get by degrees to be a higher flier at fashion, then Mrs. Boffin will by degrees come forwarder. If Mrs. Boffin should ever be less of a dab at fashion than she is at the present time, then Mrs. Boffin's carpet would go back order. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. If we should both continue as we are, boy, then here we are. And give us a kiss out lady. Mrs. Boffin, who perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her plump arm through her lawns, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the form of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it, but got deservedly crushed in the Endeavour. "So, now, Meg," said Boffin, wiping his mouth with an air of much refreshment, "you begin to know it as we are. This is a charming spot, is the power, but you must get to appreciate it by degrees. It's a spot to find out the merits of, little by little, and a new one every day. There's a certain tiny walk up each of the mounds that gives you the yard and neighbourhood change in every moment. When you get to the top, there's a view of the neighbouring premises, not to be surpassed. The premises of Mrs. Boffin's late father, canine provisioned trade, you look down into as if it were your own. And the top of the eye mound is crowned with a lattice work arbor, in which, if you don't read out loud many a book in the summer, I and as a friend drop many a time in the poetry, too, it shan't be my fault. Now, all you read on." "Uh, thank you, sir," returned Meg as if there were nothing new in his reading at all. "I generally do it on gin and water." "Keeps the organ moist, does it, Meg?" asked Mr. Boffin, with innocent eagerness. "And now, sir," replied Meg, coolly, "I should hardly describe it so, sir. I should say it. Melo is it. Melo is it, is the word I should employ, Mr. Boffin?" His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted expectation of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary mind of the many ways in which this connection was to be turned to account never obscured the foremost idea natural to a dull overreaching man that he must not make himself too cheap. Mrs. Boffin's fashion, as a less inexorable deity and the idol usually worshiped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for her literary guest, or asking if he found the result to his liking. On his returning a gracious answer and taking his place at the literary settle, Mr. Boffin began to compose himself as a listener at the opposite settle with exultant eyes. "Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Meg," he said, filling his own, "but you can't do both together. Oh, and another thing I forgot to name. When you come in here of an evening and look round you and notice anything on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy, mention it." Meg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately laid them down with the spitely observation. "You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes deceive me, or is that object up there a pie? It can't be a pie." "Yes, it's a pie," Meg replied, Mr. Boffin, with a glance of some little discomforture at the decline in fall. "Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?" asked Meg. "It's a villain and pie," said Mr. Boffin. "Easy, indeed, sir. And it would be hard, sir, to name the pie that is a better pie than a wheel enema," said Mr. Weg, nodding his head emotionally. "Have some, Weg?" "Thank you, Mr. Boffin. I think I will, at your invitation. I wouldn't any other parties at the present juncture, but at yours, sir, and meet jelly, too, especially when a little salt, which is the case where this ham, is melloring to the organ, is very melloring to the organ." Mr. Weg did not say what organ, but spoke with a cheerful generality. So, the pie was brought down and the worthy Mr. Boffin exercised his patience until Weg, in the exercise of his knife and fork, had finished the dish, only profiting by the opportunity to inform Weg that although it was not strictly fashionable to give the contents of a lardeth as exposed to view, he, Mr. Boffin, considered it hospitable, for the reason that instead of saying in a comparatively unmeaning manner to a visitor, there are such and such edibles downstairs will you have anything up? You took the bold, practical course of saying, cuffs your eye along the shelves, and if you see anything you like there, have it down. And now Mr. Weg had length pushed away his plate and put on his spectacles, and Mr. Boffin lighted his pipe, and looked with beaming eyes into the opening world before him, and Mrs. Boffin reclined in a fashionable manner on her sofa, as one who would be part of the audience if she found she could, and would go to sleep if she found she couldn't. "Ehem," began Weg. "This, Mr. Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first volume of the decline and fall off." Here he looked hard at the book and stopped. "What's the matter, Weg?" "Why, it comes into my mind, you know, sir," said Weg, with an air of insinuating frankness, having first again looked hard at the book. "That you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you right in, only something put it out in my head. I think you said 'Ruchen Empire, sir.'" "It is, Ruchen, ain't it, Weg?" "No, sir." "Roman." "Roman." "What's the difference, Weg?" "The difference, sir?" Mr. Weg was faltering and in danger of breaking down, and a bright thought flashed upon him. "The difference, sir? There you place me in a difficulty, Mr. Boffin, so if I sit to observe that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs. Boffin does not honour us with her company, in Mrs. Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it." Mr. Weg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air, and not only that, but by dent of repeating with a manly delicacy, in Mrs. Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it, turned the disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a very painful manner. Then Mr. Weg, in a dry, unflinching way, entered on his task, going straight across country at everything that came before him, taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical, getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan, and the Antonines, stumbling at Polybius, pronounced Polybius, and supposed by Mr. Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs. Boffin to be responsible for that necessity of dropping it, heavily unseated by Titus Antonina's pious, up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus, finally getting over the ground well with Commodus, who, under the appellation of Commodius, was held by Mr. Boffin to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and not to have acted up to his name in his government of the Roman people. With the death of this personage, Mr. Weg terminated his first reading. Long before which, consummation, several total eclipses of Mrs. Boffin's candle behind her black velvet disc, would have been very alarming, but for being regularly accompanied by a potent smell of burnt pens, when her feathers took fire, which acted as a restorative and wokher. Mr. Weg, having read on by Wote and attached as few ideas as possible to the text, came out of the encounter fresh; but Mr. Boffin, who had soon laid down his unfinished pipe, had it ever since sat intently staring with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, which so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend a good night, and articulate to-morrow. "Commodius!" gasped Mr. Boffin, staring at the moon, after letting Weg out at the gate infesting it. "Commodius!" fights in that wild beast show, seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character only. As if that wasn't stunning enough, a hundred lions is turning to the same wild beast show all at once. As if that wasn't stunning enough, "Commodius!" in another character kills them all off, in a hundred goes, and as if that wasn't stunning enough, "Vitalus!" and, well-named two, eats six billions worth English money in seven months. "Weg" takes it easy. Upon my soldier, an old bird like myself, these are scarers, and even now that "Commodius" is strangled. I don't see a way to our better in ourselves. Mr. Boffin added, as he turned his pensive steps towards the bowler and shook his head, "I didn't think this morning there was all so many scarers in print, but I am in for it now." End of Book 1 Chapter 5 Hey Amazon Prime Members! Why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon Brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. 6. Cut adrift The six Jolly Fellowship porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hail infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line, but it had outlasted and clearly would yet outlast many a better trimmed building, many a sprucer public house. Externally, it was a narrow, lopsided wooden jumble of copulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden veranda impending over the water. Indeed, the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flagstaff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all. His description applies to the river frontage of the six Jolly Fellowship porters. The back of the establishment, though the chief entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented in its connection with the front the handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end. This handle stood at the bottom of a wilderness of court and alley, which wilderness pressed so hard and close upon the six Jolly Fellowship porters as to leave the hostelry not an inch of ground beyond its door. For this reason, in combination with the fact that the house has all but afloat at high water, when the porters had a family wash, the linen subjected to that operation might usually be seen drying on lines stretched across the reception rooms and bed chambers. The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, partitions, floors and doors of the six Jolly Fellowship porters, seemed in its old age fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it had become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees, knots started out of it, and here and there it seemed to twist itself into some likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood it had an air of being in its own way garrulous about its early life. Not without reason was it often asserted by the regular frequenters of the porters that when the light shone full upon the grain of certain panels, and particularly upon an old corner cupboard of walnut wood in the bar, you might trace little forests there and tiny trees like the parent tree in full, ambragious leaf. The bar of the six Jolly Fellowship porters was a bar to soften the human breast. The available space in it was not much larger than a Hackney coach, but no one could have wished the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corporate little casks, and by cordial bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by the polite beer pools that made low boughs when customers were served with beer, and by the cheese in a snug corner, and by the landlady's own small table in a snugger corner near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. This haven was divided from the rough world by a glass partition and a half-door, with a leaden sill upon it for the convenience of resting your liquor. But over this half-door, the bar's snugness so gushed forth that all-be-it customers drank their standing in a dark and drafty passage where they were shouldered by other customers passing in and out, they always appeared to drink under an enchanting delusion that they were in the bar itself. For the rest, both the tap and parlour of the six Jolly Fellowship-porters gave upon the river, and had red curtains matching the noses of the regular customers, and were provided with comfortable fireside tin utensils, like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they might, with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the depths of the red coals when they mulled your ale or heated for you those delectable drinks, pearl, flip, and dog's nose. The first of these humming-compens was a speciality of the porters, which, through an inscription on its doorposts, gently appealed to your feelings as "the early pearl-house." For it would seem that pearl must always be taken early, though whether, for any more distinctly stomacic reason than that, as the early bird catches the worm so the early pearl catches the customer, cannot here be resolved. It only remains to add that in the handle of the flat iron and opposite the bar was a very little room, like a three-cornered hat, into which no direct ray of sun, moon, or star ever penetrated, but which was superstitiously regarded as a sanctuary, replete with comfort and retirement by gas-site, and on the door of which was therefore painted its alluring name, Cozy. Miss Poterson, sole proprietor and manager of Fellowship-Porters, rained supreme on her throne, the bar, and a man must have drunk himself mad-drunk indeed if he thought he could contest a point with her. Being known on her own authority as Miss Abby Poterson, some waterside heads, which, like the water, were none of the clearest, harboured muddled notions that, because of her dignity and firmness, she was named after, or in some sort related to, the Abbey at Westminster. But Abbey was only short for Abigail, by which name Miss Poterson had been christened at Limehouse Church some sixty and odd years before. "Now you mind you, riderhood?" said Miss Abby Poterson, with emphatic forefinger over the half-door. "The fellowship don't want you at all, and would rather, by far, have your room than your company. But if you were as welcome here as you were not, you shouldn't even then have another drop of drinkier this night, after this present pint of beer. So, make the most of it." "But, you know, Miss Poterson?" this was suggested very meekly, though. "If I be home myself, you can't help serving me, Miss." "Can't I?" said Abbey, with infinite expression. "No, Miss Poterson, because you see the law, I am the law here, my man," returned Miss Abby, "and I'll soon convince you of that, if you doubt it, at all. I never said I didn't doubt it at all, Miss Abby. So much the better for you." Abbey, the Supreme, threw the customers' hatens into the till, and, seating herself in her fireside chair, resumed the newspaper she had been reading. She was a tall, upright, well-favored woman, though severe of countenance, and had more of the air of a school mistress than mistress of the six-jolly fellowship-porters. The man on the other side of the half-door was a water-side man with a squinting leer, and he eyed her as if he were one of her pupils in disgrace. "You're cruel-odd upon me, Miss Poterson," Miss Poterson read her newspaper with contracted brows, and took no notice until he whispered, "Miss Poterson, ma'am, might I have off a word with you?" Daining then to turn her eyes sideways towards the suppliant, Miss Poterson beheld him knuckling his low forehead, and ducking at her with his head, as if you were asking leave to fling himself head foremost over the half-door and a light on his feet and the bar. "Well," said Miss Poterson, with a manner of short a she herself was long, "say your half-word, bring it out." "Miss Poterson, ma'am, would you excuse me taking the liberty of asking? Is it my character you take objections to?" "Certainly," said Miss Poterson, "is it that you're afraid of? I am not afraid of you," said Miss Poterson, "if you mean that." "But I humbly don't mean that, Miss Abbey. Then what do you mean?" "You really are so cruel-odd upon me. What I was going to make inquiries was no more than might you have any apprehensions, least ways, beliefs, or suppositions, that the company's property mightn't be altogether to be considered safe, if I use the house too regular." "What do you want to know for?" "Well, Miss Abbey, respectfully meaning no offense to you, it would be some satisfaction to a man's mind to understand why the fellowship-portals is not to be free to such as me, and is to be free to such as Gaffa." The face of the hostess darkened, with some shadow of perplexity, as she replied, "Gaffa has never been where you have been." "Signifying in quad-miss? Perhaps not. But he may have merited it. He may be suspected of far worse than ever I was." "Who suspects him?" "Many, perhaps. One, beyond all doubts. I do. You are not much," said Miss Abbey Poterson, visiting her brows again with disdain. "But I was his partner, mind you, Miss Abbey. I was his partner. As such I know more of the ins and outs of him than any person living just. Notice this. I am a man. It was his partner, and I am the man that suspects him." "Then," suggested Miss Abbey, that with the depreciated perplexity than before, "you can not discriminate yourself." Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Funds issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank N.A. member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. "Now I don't, Miss Abbey. For how does it stand? It stands this way. When I was his partner, I couldn't never give him satisfaction. Why couldn't I never give him satisfaction? Because my luck was bad. Because I couldn't find many enough of him. I was his luck. Always good. Notice this. Always good. Ah, there's are many games, Miss Abbey, in which there's chance. But there's are many others in which there's skill too, mixed along with it." The gaffer has a skill in finding what he finds. "Who doubts, man?" asked Miss Abbey. "A skill in providing what he finds, perhaps," said Riderhood, shaking his evil head. Miss Abbey knitted her brow at him as he darkly leered at her. "If you're out upon the river, pretty nigh every tide, and if you want to find a man or woman in the river, you'll greatly help your luck, Miss Abbey, by knocking a man or woman on the head of forehand, and pitching him in." "Cracious lad!" was the involuntary exclamation of Miss Poterson. "Mind you!" returned the other, stretching forward over the half-door to throw his words into the bar, for his voice was as if the head of his boat-smop were down his throat. "I say so, Miss Abbey, and mind you I'll follow him up, Miss Abbey, and mind you I'll bring him to hook at last if it's twenty-year hence, I will. Whose he to be favoured along of his daughter, ain't I got a daughter of my own?" With that flourish, and seeming to have talked himself rather more drunk and much more ferocious than he had begun by being, Mr. Riderhood took up his pint pot and swagged off to the taproom. Gather was not there, but a pretty strong muster of Miss Abbey's pupils were, who exhibited when occasion required the greatest docility. On the clock's striking ten, and Miss Abbey's appearing at the door, and addressing a certain person in a faded scarlet jacket with, "George Jones, your time's up. I told your wife it should be punctual." Jones submissibly rose, gave the company goodnight, and retired. At half past ten, on Miss Abbey's looking in again and saying, "Ooh, young Williams, Bob Glamour, and Jonathan, you're all due!" Williams, Bob and Jonathan, with similar meekness, took their leave and evaporated. Their wonder than these, when a bottled-nosed person in a glazed hat, had, after some considerable hesitation, ordered another glass of gin and water of the attendant pot-boy, and, when Miss Abbey instead of sending it, appeared in person saying, "Captain Joey, you've had as much as we'll do you good. Not only did the captain feebly rub his knees and contemplate the fire without offering a word of protest, but the rest of the company murmured, "I, Captain, Miss Abbey's right. You'll be guided by Miss Abbey, Captain." Nor was Miss Abbey's vigilance, in any wise abated by this submission, but rather sharpened. For, looking round on the deferential faces of her school, and describing two other young persons in need of admonition, she thus bestowed it. "Tom Tootle, it's time for a young fellow who's going to be married next month to be at home in a sleep. And you need nudge him, Mr. Jack Mullins, for I know your work begins early tomorrow, and I say the same to you. So come, good night like good lads." Upon which the blushing Tootle looked to Mullins, and the blushing Mullins looked to Tootle, on the question who should rise first, and finally both rose together and went out on the broad grin, followed by Miss Abbey, and whose presence the company did not take the liberty of grinning likewise. In such an establishment, the white apron to Potboy, where the shirt sleeves arranged in a tight roll on each bare shoulder, was a mere hint of the possibility of physical force thrown out as a matter of state and form. Exactly at the closing hour, all the guests who were left, filed out in the best order. Miss Abbey, standing at the half-door of the bar, to hold a ceremony of review and dismissal. All wished Miss Abbey good night, and Miss Abbey wished good night to all, except ride-a-hood. The sapient Potboy, looking on officially, then had the conviction borne in upon his soul, that the man was ever more outcast and ex-communicate from the six Jolly Fellowship-porters. "You, Bob Glittery," said Miss Abbey, to this Potboy, "run round a hexams, until his daughter and Lizzie, I want to speak to her." With exemplary swiftness, Bob Glittery departed, and returned. Lizzie, following him, arrived as one of the two female domestics of the Fellowship-porters, arranged on the snug little table by the bar-fire, Miss Poterson's supper of hot sausages and mashed potatoes. "Come in, and sit ye down, girl," said Miss Abbey. "Can you eat a bit?" "No. Thank you, Miss. I've had my supper." "I have had mine, too, I think," said Miss Abbey, pushing away the untasted dish, "and more than enough of it. I am put out, Lizzie. I am very sorry for it, Miss. Then why, in the name of goodness," quoted Miss Abbey sharply, "do you do it?" "I do it, Miss." "There, there! Don't look astonished. I ought to begun with a word of explanation, but it's my way to make shortcuts at things. I always was a pepora. You, Bob Glittery, there, put the chain upon the door and get ye down to your supper." With an allacrity that seemed no less referable to the pepora-fact, until the supper-fact, Bob obeyed, and his butts were heard descending towards the bed of the river. "Lizzie Hexham! Lizzie Hexham!" then began Miss Poterson. "How often have I held out to you the opportunity of getting clear of your father and doing well?" "Very often, Miss." "Very often, yes. In armour, as well as spoken of the iron funnel of the strongest seagulling steamer that passes the fellowship porters." "No, Miss." Lizzie pleaded, "because that would not be thankful, and I am. I vow and declare I am off ashamed of myself for taking such an interest in you," said Miss Abby, pettishly, "for I don't believe I should do it if you are not good-looking. Why ain't you ugly?" Lizzie merely answered this difficult question for the apologetic glance. "However, you faint," assumed Miss Poterson, "so is no use going at that. I must take you as I find you, which indeed is what I have done. And you mean to say, you are still obstinate?" "Not obstinate, Miss, I hope." "Firm, I suppose you call it then?" "Yes, Miss." fixed like. "Never was an obstinate person yet who would own to the word," remarked Miss Poterson, rubbing her vexed nose. "I'm sure I would if I was obstinate, but I am a pepperer, which is different, Lizzie Hexum. Lizzie Hexum. Think again. Do you know the worst of your father?" "Do I know the worst of father?" she repeated, opening her eyes. "Do you know the suspicions to which your father makes himself liable? Do you know the suspicions that are actually about against him?" The consciousness of what he habitually did, oppressed the girl heavily, and she slowly cast down her eyes. "Say, Lizzie, do you know?" urged Miss Abbey. "Please, do you tell me what the suspicions are, Miss?" she asked, after a silence with her eyes upon the ground. "It's not an easy thing to tell a daughter, but it must be told. It is thought by some, then, that your father helps to their death, a few of those that he finds dead." The relief of hearing what she felt sure was a false suspicion, in place of the expected real and true one, so lightened Lizzie's breast for the moment, that Miss Abbey was amazed at her demeanour. She raised her eyes quickly, shook her head, and in a kind of triumph, almost laughed. "The little no father, who talk like that!" She takes it, thought Miss Abbey, very quietly. She takes it with extraordinary quietness. "And perhaps," said Lizzie, as a recollection flashed upon her, "it is someone who has a graduate's father, someone who has threatened father. Is it Ryderhood, Miss?" "Well, yes it is." "Yes. He was father's partner. The father broke with him, and now he revenges himself. Father broke with him and I was bi, and he was very angry at it. And besides, Miss Abbey, will you never, without strong reason, let pass your lips, what I am going to say?" She bent forward, to say it in a whisper. "I promise," said Miss Abbey. "It was on the night when the harm and murder was found out, through father, just above breach. And just below breach, as we were sculling home, Ryderhood crept out of the dark in his boat. And many and many times afterwards, when such great pains were taken to come to the bottom of the crime and it never could become near, I thought in my own thoughts." Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's Favor, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Rewards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offers subject to change, terms apply. Could Rido would himself have done the murder and did he purposely let father find a body? It seemed almost wicked and cruel to so much as think such a thing. But now that he tries to throw it upon father, I'll go back to it, as if it was a truth. Can it be a truth? That was put into my mind by the dead? She asked this question, rather of the fire than of the hostess of the fellowship porters, and looked round the little bar with troubled eyes. But Miss Poterson, as a ready school mistress accustomed to bring her pupils to book, set the matter in the light that was essentially of this world. "You poor, deluded girl," she said. "Don't you see that you can't open your mind to the particular suspicions of one of the two without opening your mind to general suspicions of the other. They had worked together. Their goings on had been going on for some time. Even granting that it was, as you have had in your thoughts, what the two had done together would come familiar to the mind of one." "You don't know, father, Miss, when you talk like that. Indeed, you don't know, father." "Lizzie, Lizzie," said Miss Poterson. "Leave him. You needn't break with him altogether, but leave him. Do well away from him. Not because of what I've told you tonight. We'll pass no judgement upon that, and we'll hope it may not be, but because of what I've urged on you before. No matter whether it's owing to your good looks or not, I like you and I want to serve you. Lizzie, come under my direction. Don't fling yourself away, my girl. But be persuaded in it being respectable and happy." In the sound good feeling and good sense of her entreaty, Miss Abby had softened into a soothing tone and had even drawn her arm around the girl's waist. But, she only replied, "Thank you. Thank you. I can't. I won't. I must not think of it. The harder father is born upon, the more he needs me to lean on." And then Miss Abby, who, like all hard people when they do soften, felt that there was considerable compensation owing to her, underwent reaction and became frigid. "I have done what I can," she said. "And you must go your way. You make your bed, and you must lie on it. But tell your father one thing. He must not come here any more." "Oh, Miss. Will you forbid in the house where I know he's safe?" "The fellow ships," return Miss Abby, "has itself to look to, as well as others. It has been hard work to establish order here, and make the fellow ships what it is, and it is daily and nightly hard work to keep it so. The fellow ships must not have attained upon it that may give it a bad name. I forbid the house to ride a hood, and I forbid the house to gaffer. I forbid both, equally. I find from ride a hood and you together that there are suspicions against both men, and I'm not going to take upon myself to decide betwixt them. They are both tarred with a dirty brush, and I can't have the fellow ships tarred with the same brush. That's all I know." "Good night, Miss," said Lizzy Hexam sorrowfully, "Ah, good night," returned Miss Abby with a shake of her head. "Believe me, Miss Abby. I'm truly great for all the same." "I can believe a good deal," returned Miss Abby, "so I'll try to believe that too, Lizzy." No supper did Miss Poterson take that night, and only half her usual tumbler of hot-port nagus. And the female domestics, two robust sisters, were staring black eyes, shining flat red faces, blunt noses, and strong black curls like dolls, interchanged the sentiment that Mrs. had had her hair combed the wrong way by somebody. And the potboy afterward remarked that he hadn't been so rattled to bed since his late mother had systematically accelerated his retirement to rest with a poker. The chaining of the door behind her, as she went forth, disenchanted Lizzy Hexam of that first relief she had felt. The night was black and shrill, the riverside wilderness was melancholy, and there was a sound of casting out in the rattling of the iron-links, and the grating of the bolts and staples under Miss Abby's hand. As she came beneath the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in a murky shade of murder dropped upon her, and as the tidal swell of the river broke at her feet without her seeing how it gathered, so her thoughts startled her by rushing out of an unseen void and striking at her heart. Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure, sure, sure, and yet repeats the word inwardly as often as she would, the attempt to reason out and prove that she was sure always came after it and failed. Rideherhood had done the deed, and entrapped her father. Rideherhood had not done the deed, but had resolved in his malice to turn against her father, the appearances that were ready to his hand to distort. Equally and swiftly upon either putting of the case, followed the frightful possibility that her father, being innocent, yet might come to be believed guilty. She had heard of people suffering death for bloodshed of which they were afterwards proved pure, and those ill-fated persons were not first in that dangerous wrong in which her father stood. And at the best, the beginning of his being set apart, whispered against and avoided, was a certain fact. It dated from that very night. And as the great black river with its dreary shores was soon lost to her view in the gloom, so she stood on the river's brink, unable to see into the vast blank misery of a life suspected, and fallen away from by good and bad, but knowing that it lay there dim before her, stretching away to the great ocean, death. One thing only was clear to the girl's mind. A custom from her very babyhood promptly to do the thing that could be done, whether to keep out weather, to ward off cold, to postpone hunger, or whatnot, she started out of her meditation and ran home. The room was quiet and the lamp burnt on the table. In the bunk in the corner her brother lay asleep. She bent over him softly, kissed him, and came to the table. By the time in Miss Abby's closing, and by the run of the tide, it must be one. Tides running up. Father Ichisic wouldn't think of coming down till after the turn, and that's at half after four. I'll call Charlie at six. I shall hear the church clock strike as I sit here. Very quietly she placed a chair before the scanty fire, and sat down in it, drawing her shawl about her. Charlie's hollow, down by the flare, is not there now. Poor Charlie. The clock struck two, and the clock struck three, and the clock struck four, and she remained there with a woman's patience and her own purpose. When the morning was well on between four and five, she slipped off her shoes that her going about might not wake Charlie. Trim the fire sparingly, put water on to boil, and set the table for breakfast. Then she went up the ladder, lamp in hand, and came down again, and glided about and about, making a little bundle. Lastly, from her pocket and from the chimney-piece, and from an inverted basin on the highest shelf, she brought hapents, a few six-minces, fewer shillings, and fell to laboriously and noiselessly counting them, and setting aside one little heap. She was still so engaged, when she was startled by, "Hello!" my brother, sitting up in bed, "You made me jump, Charlie. Jump! You made me jump when I up my eyes a moment ago, and saw you sit in there like the ghost of a girl, miser, in the dead of the night. It's not the dead of the night, Charlie. It's nice, six in the morning. Is it, though, but what were you up to, Liz? Still telling your fortune, Charlie. It seems to be a precious small one, if that's it," said the boy, "what are you putting that little pile of money by itself for? For you, Charlie. What do you mean? Get out of bed, Charlie, and get washed and dressed, and then I'll tell you." Her composed manner, and her low-distinct voice, always had an influence over him. His head was soon in a basin of water and out of it again, and staring at her through a storm of tawling. "I never," tawling at himself as if he were his bitterest enemy, "saw such a girl as you are. What is the move, Liz? Are you almost ready for breakfast, Charlie? Eat and pour it out? Hell, hell, I'll say, and a bundle." "And a bundle, Charlie. You don't mean it's for me, too?" "Yes, Charlie. I do, indeed." More serious of face and more slow of action than he had been. The boy completed his dressing, and came and sat down at the little breakfast table with his eyes amazingly directed to her face. "You see, Charlie, dear, I've made up my mind that this is the right time for your going away from us. Over and above all the blessed change of buy and buy, you'll be much happier, and do much better, even so soon as next month, even so soon as next week. How do you know I shall?" "I don't quite know how, Charlie, but I do." In spite of her unchanged manner of speaking, and her unchanged appearance of composure, she scarcely trusted herself to look at him, but kept her eyes employed on the cutting and buttering of his bread, and on the mixing of his tea, and other such little preparations. "You must leave, Father, to me, Charlie. I will do what I can with him, but you must go." "You don't stand upon ceremony, I think," grumbled the boy, throwing his bread and butter about in an ill humour. She made him no answer. "I'll tell you what," said the boy, then bursting out into an angry whimpering, "you are a selfish jade, and you think there's not enough for three of us, and you want to get rid of me?" "If you believe so, Charlie, yes, then I believe, too, that I am a selfish jade, and that I think there's not enough for three of us, and that I want to get rid of you." It was only when the boy rushed at her, and threw his arms round her neck, that she lost herself restrained. But she lost it then, and wept over him. "Don't cry. Don't cry. I am satisfied to go, Liz. I am satisfied to go. I know you've sent me away for me good." "Oh, Charlie, Charlie. Even above us knows I do." "Yes, yes. Tell me what I said. Don't remember it. Kiss me." After silence, she loosed him to dry her eyes and regain her strong, quiet influence. "Now, listen, Charlie dear. We both know it must be done, and I alone know there is good reason for it's being done at once. Go straight to the school, and say that you and I agreed upon it, that we can't overcome Father's opposition, that Father will never travel them, but will never take you back. You are a credit to the school, and you'll be a greater credit to eat yet, and they will help you to get a living. Show what clothes do you have brought, and what money, and say that I will send some more money. If I can get some in no other way, I will ask a little help of those two gentlemen who came here that night." "I say," cried her brother quickly, "don't you have it off, that chap, that took hold of me by the chin. Don't you have it off that very burn one?" Perhaps a slight additional tinge of red flushed up into her face, and brow, as of the nod you laid a hand upon his lips to keep him silently attentive. And above all things, mind this Charlie. Be sure you always speak well of Father. Be sure you always give Father his full Jew. You can't deny that, because Father is now learning himself, you set against it in you, but favour nothing else against him, and be sure you say, as you know, that your sister is devoted to him, and if you should ever happen to hear anything said against Father that is new to you, it will not be true. Remember, Charlie, it will not be true." The boy looked at her with some doubt and surprise, but she went on again without heeding it. "Above all things, remember, it will not be true. I have nothing more to say, Charlie, dear, except be good, and get learning, and only think of some things in the old life here, as if you had dreamed them in a dream last night. Good-bye, my darling!" Though so young, she infused in these parting words, a love that was far more like a mother as than a sister's, and before which the boy was quite bowed down. After holding her to his breast with a passionate cry, he took up his bundle and darted out of the door with an arm across his eyes. The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist, and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances, and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest, hit it set on fire. Lizzie, looking for her father, saw him coming, and stood upon the causeway that he might see her. He had nothing with him but his boat, and came on a pace. And not of those amphibious human creatures who appeared to have some mysterious power of extracting a subsistence out of tidal water by looking at it were gathered together about the causeway. As her father's boat grounded, they became contemplative of the mud, and dispersed themselves. She saw that the mute avoidance had begun. Gaffa saw it too, in so far as that he was moved when he set foot on shore to stay around him. But he promptly set to work to haul up his boat and make her fast, and take the skulls and rudder and rope out of her. Carrying these with Lizzie's aid, he passed up to his dwelling. Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh. Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. Sit close to the fire, Father dear, while I cook your breakfast. It's all ready for cooking and only been waiting for you. You must be frozen. Well, is he? I ain't of a glow. That's certain. And I ain't seen nailed through to the skulls. See how dead they are. Something suggestive in their color, and perhaps in her face, struck him as he held him up. He turned his shoulder and held him down to the fire. You were not out in the perishing night, I hope, Father? Now, my dear, lay aboard a barge by a blazing coal fire. Who is that boy? There's a drop of brandy for your tea, Father, if you put it in while I turn this bit of meat. If there ever was to get frozen, there would be a deal of distress, wouldn't there, Father? "Ah, there's always enough of that," said Gaffa, dropping the liquor into his cup from a squat black bottle, and dropping it slowly, that it might seem more. Distress is forever going about like soot in the air. Ain't that boy up yet? The meat's ready now, Father. Eat it while it's hot and comfortable. After you have finished, we'll turn round to the fire and talk. But he perceived that he was evaded, and having thrown a hasty angry glance towards the bunk, plucked at a corner of her apron and asked, "Worse gone with that boy!" "Father, if you begin your breakfast, I'll sit by and tell you." He looked at her, stirred his tea, and took two or three gulps, then cut at his piece of hot steak with his case knife, and said, eating, "How, then, what's--what's gone with that tea?" "Don't be angry, dear." "It seems, Father, that he has quite a gift of learning." "A natural young beggar!" said the parent, shaking his knife in the air. "And that having this gift and not being equally good at other things, he has made shift to get some schooling." "An natural young beggar!" said the parent again, with his former action. "And that knowing you have nothing to spare, Father, and not wishing to be a burden on you, he gradually made up his mind to go seek his fortune out of learning. He went away this morning, Father, and he cried very much at going, and he hoped you would forgive him." "Let him never come an eye, me, to ask me my forgiveness," said the Father, again emphasizing his words of the knife. "Let him never come within sight of my eyes, nor yet within reach of my arm. His own Father ain't good enough for him. He disowned his own Father. His own Father, therefore, dishomes him forever and ever as an unnatural young beggar." He had pushed away his plate, with the natural need of a strong, rough man in anger to do something forcible. He now clutched his knife over hand, and struck downward with it at the end of every succeeding sentence, as he would have struck with his own clenched fist if they had chanced to be nothing in it. "He's welcome to go. He's more welcome to go and stay. But let him never come back. Let him never put his head inside that door, and let you never speak a word more in his favour, or you'll disown your own Father likewise. And what your Father says of him, he left to come to say of you. Now I see why their men yondailed aloof for me. He says to one another, 'Here comes the man, as ain't good enough for his own son. Lizzie.' But she stopped him with a cry. Looking at her, he saw her, with a face quite strange to him, shrinking back against the wall with her hands before her eyes. "Father, don't. I've got to see you striking with it. Put it down." He looked at the knife, but in his astonishment still held it. "Father, he's too horrible. I'll put it down, put it down." Confounded by her appearance and exclamation, he tossed it away, and stood up with the open hands held out before him. "What can be you, Liz? Can you think I would strike at you with a knife?" "No, Father. No. You would never hurt me. What should I hurt? Nothing, dear Father. On my knees I am certain, in my heart and soul I am certain nothing, but he was too dreadful to bear for it looked." Her hands covering her face again. "Oh, it looked! What did it look like?" The recollection of his murderous figure, combining with a trial of last night and a trial of the morning, caused her to drop at his feet without having answered. He had never seen her so before. He raised over the utmost tenderness, calling her the best of daughters, and my poor, pretty creature, and laid her head upon his knee and tried to restore her. But failing, he laid her head gently down again, got a pillow, and placed it under her dark hair, and sought on the table for a spoonful of brandy. There being none left, he hurriedly caught up the empty bottle and ran out the door. He returned as hurriedly as he had gone, with the bottle still empty. He kneeled down by her, took her head on his arm and moistened her lips with a little water into which he dipped his fingers, saying fiercely as he looked around, now over his shoulder, now over that. "Have we got a pest in the house? Is there some a deadly stick in my clothes? What's let loose upon us? Who lost it?" CHAPTER VII Mr. Weg looks after himself. Silas Weg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way of clarkenwell. The time is early in the evening, the weather moist and raw. Mr. Weg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he folds his screen early, now that he combines another source of income with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously expected at the bower. "Baffen, we'll get all the eager, they'll wait in a bit," says Silas, screwing up as he stumps along, first his right eye and then his left, which is something superfluous in him, for nature has already screwed both pretty tight. "If I get on with him, as I expect to get on," Silas pursues, stumping and meditating, "it wouldn't become me to leave it here, it wouldn't be respectable." Animated by this reflection he stumps faster and looks a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in a bayon's often will do. "Aware of a working jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church and clarkenwell, Mr. Weg is conscious of an interest in and respect for the neighbourhood; but his sensations in this regard halt as to their strict morality, as he halts in his gate; for they suggest the delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off safely with the precious stones and watchcases, but stop short of any compunction for the people who would lose the same. Not, however, towards the shops, where cunning artificers work in pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich at the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the refiners. Not towards these as Mr. Weg's stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm; and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing birds. From these, in a narrow and dirty street, devoted to such callings, Mr. Weg selects one dark shop window with the tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick; but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door, and follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark that nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another tallow candle in another old tin candlestick close to the face of a man stooping low in a chair. Mr. Weg nods to the face. "Good evening!" The face, looking up, is a shallow face with weak eyes surmounted by a tangle of reddish dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt colour to work with the more ease; for the same reason he has no coat on, only a loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver; but he is not that. His expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker; but he is not that. "Good evening, Mr. Venus. Now, you, remember?" With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr. Venus rises, and holds his candle over the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs, natural and artificial, of Mr. Weg. "To be sure," he says then. "How do you do?" "Weg, you know?" that gentleman explains. "Yes, yes," says the other. "Hoff-spit-lamp-utation." Hey, Amazon Prime members! Why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50 percent on weekly grocery favourites. Plus, save 10 percent on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change terms apply. "Just sell," says Mr. Weg. "Yes, yes," quote Venus. "How do you do? Sit down by the fire and warm your--your other one." The local counter being so short a counter that it leaves the fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible. Mr. Weg sits down on a box in front of the fire and inhales a warm and comfortable smell, which is not the smell of the shop. For that, Mr. Weg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, is musty, leathery, feathery, celery, gluey, gummy, and with another sniff, as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows. "My tea is drawing and my muffin is on the hob, Mr. Weg. Will you partake?" But being one of Mr. Weg's guiding rules in life always, to partake, he says he will. But the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees Mr. Venus' cup and saucer only because it is close under the candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess Mr. Venus produces another for himself until it is under his nose. Concurrently, Weg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the counter with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr. Venus' saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it were Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad, and Mr. Venus were the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr. Weg were the fly with his little eye. Mr. Venus dives and produces another muffin, yet untoasted. Taking the arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to toast it on the end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he dives again and produces butter, with which he completes his work. Mr. Weg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by and by, presses muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of mind, or, as one might say, degrees his works. As the muffins disappear little by little, the black shelves and nooks and corners begin to appear, and Mr. Weg gradually acquires an imperfect notion that, over against him on the chimney-piece, is a Hindu baby in a bottle, curved up with his big head tucked under him, as he would instantly throw a somersault if the bottle were large enough. When he deems Mr. Venus' wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr. Weg approaches his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands together, to express an undesining frame of mind. "And how have I been going on this long time, Mr. Venus?" "Very bad," says Mr. Venus, uncompromisingly. "What? Am I still at home?" asks Weg, with an air of surprise. "Always at home." This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Weg, but he veils his feelings and observes, "Strange! To what do you attribute it?" "I don't know," replies Venus, "who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a weak voice of quarrelous complaint. To what--to attribute it, Mr. Weg, I can't work you into a miscellaneous one, no, how. Do what I will--you can't be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look and say, 'No, go, don't match.' 'Well, but hang it, Mr. Venus,' Weg expostulates with some little irritation, 'that can't be personal and peculiar in me. It must often happen with miscellaneous ones. With ribs, I grant you, always, but not else. When I prepare a miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can't keep the nature and be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no other man will go with them. But else ways I can be miscellaneous. I've just sent home a beauty, a perfect beauty, to a school of art. One leg, Belgian, one leg, English, and the pickies of eight other people in it. To all of not being qualified to be miscellaneous, by rights you ought to be, Mr. Weg. Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and after a pause, sulky opines that, 'It must be the fault of the other people. Or how do you mean to say it comes about?' he demands impatiently. 'I don't know how it comes about.' Stand at my minute. Hold the light. Mr. Venus takes from a corner by his chair the bones of a leg and foot, beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he compares with Mr. Weg's leg, that gentleman looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding-boot. 'No. I don't know how it is, but so it is. You have got a twist in that bone, to the best in my belief, I'll never saw the likes of you.' Mr. Weg, having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at the pattern with which it has been compared, looks the point, 'Ah, better pound, that ain't an English one.' An easy wager when we run so much into foreign. 'No, it belongs to that French gentleman.' As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr. Weg, the latter with a slight start, looks round for that French gentleman, whom he at length describes, to be represented in a very workman-like manner, by his ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour or a pair of stays. 'Oh!' says Mr. Weg, for the sort of sense of being introduced. 'I, dear, say, were all right enough in your own country, but I hope no objections will be taken am I saying, that the Frenchman was never yet born as arched which to match.' At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a boy follows it, who says, after having let it slam, 'Come for the Mother of Canary!' 'It's three and nine pence,' returns Venus. 'Heavier got the money.' The boy produces four shillings. Mr. Venus, always an exceedingly low spirits and making whimpering sounds, appears about for the stuffed canary. On his taking the candle to assist his search, Mr. Weg observes that he has a convenient little shelf near his knees, exclusively appropriated to skeleton hands, which have very much the appearance of wanting to lay hold of him. From these Mr. Venus rescues the canary in a glass-case and shows it to the boy. 'There,' he whimpers, 'there's animation, on a twig, making up his mind a hop. Take care of him, he's a lovely specimen, and three years four.' The boy gathers up his change, and has pulled the door open by a leather strap, nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out, 'Stop him, come back, you young villain, you've got a tooth among their maitments.' 'Ew, I don't know, I got it, you give it me, I don't want none of your teeth, I've got enough of my own.' So the boy pipes, as he selects it from his change and throws it on the counter. 'Don't source me in the wishish pride of your youth,' Mr. Venus retorts pathetically. 'Don't hit me, because you see, arm down, arm low enough without that. It dropped into the teal, I suppose. I drop in everything. It was too in a coffee-pot at breakfast time. Mollers.' 'Very well then,' argues the boy, 'what you call names for?' To which Mr. Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair and winking his weak eyes. 'Don't source me in the wishish pride of your youth, don't hit me, because you see, arm down. You've no idea how small you come out, if I had the articulate in of you.' This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, before he goes out grumbling. 'O dear me, dear me,' sighs Mr. Venus heavily, snuffing the candle. 'The world appeared so flairy, as cease to blow. Your cast in your eye round a shot, Mr. Weg. Let me show you a light. My working-bench, my young man's-bench, a wice, twos, bones-wearious, skulls-wearious, preserved Indian baby, African ditto, bottle of preparations-wearious, everything within reach of your hand in good preservation. The mouldy ones are top. Walked in those ampers over them again. I don't quite remember. Say, human-wearious, cats, all-ticulated English baby, dogs, dacks, glass-eyes-wearious, mummied bird, dried cuticle-wearious. 'O dear me, that's a general panoramic view.' Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and then retire again, Mr. Venus despondently repeats. 'O dear me, dear me,' resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to pouring himself out more tea. 'Where am I?' asks Mr. Weg. 'You're somewhere in the back shop across the arse, sir. You and, speaking quite candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the hospital-porter. Now, look here. What did you give for me?' 'Well,' replies Venus, blowing his tea, his head and face peering out of the darkness over the smoke of it, as if you were modernising the old original rise in his family. 'You were worn over a weariest lot, and I don't know,' Dylus puts his point in the improved form of, 'What will you take for me?' 'Well,' replies Venus, still blowing his tea, 'I'm not prepared a moment's notice to tell you, Mr. Weg. 'Can, according to your own account, I'm not worth much.' Weg reasons, persuasively. 'Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr. Weg. But you might turn out valuable yet, as a—here Mr. Venus takes a gulp of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering. As a—monstrosity, if you'll excuse me.' Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition to excuse him, Silas pursues his point. 'I think you know me, Mr. Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.' 'Mr. Venus takes gulp of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and opening them again in a spasmotic manner, but does not commit himself to a scent.' 'I have a prospect of getting on in life, and elevating myself, by my own, independent exertions,' says Weg, feelingly. 'And I shouldn't like, I tell you openly I should not like, under such circumstances, to be what I may call dispersed, a part of my ear, and a part of me there, that should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.' 'It's a prospect at present, is it, Mr. Weg, and you haven't got the money for a deal about you. Then I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll hold you over.' 'I'm a man, and me word, and you need me afraid of my disposing of you. I'll hold you over, as a promise.' 'Oh, dear me, dear me.' Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr. Weg looks on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to get a sympathetic tone into his voice. 'You seem very low, Mr. Venus, is business bad?' 'Never was so good.' 'Is your hand out at all?' 'Never was so well in.' 'Mr. Weg, I'm not only first in the trade, but I'm the trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like, and pay the West End price, but it'll be my putting together. I've as much to do as I can possibly do, with the assistance of my young man, and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.' Mr. Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his smoking saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst into a flood of tears. 'Oh, that ain't a state of things to make you low, Mr. Venus.' 'Mr. Weg, I know it ain't. Mr. Weg, not to name myself was a workman without an equal. I've gone on improving myself and my knowledge of anatomy, to both by sight and by name, I'm perfect. Mr. Weg, if he was brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I'd name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as art could pick him out, and I'd sort them all and sort your work to bray in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.' 'Well,' remarked Silas, though not quite so readily as last time, 'that ain't a state of things to be low about, not for you to be low about least ways.' 'Mr. Weg, I know it ain't. Mr. Weg, I know it ain't. But it's art that lowers me. It is the art. Be so good as to take and read that card out loud.' Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles' reads, 'Mr. Venus,' 'yes, go on,' 'preserver of animals and birds,' 'yes, go on,' 'articulator of human bones.' 'That's it,' with a groan. 'That's it, Mr. Weg. I'm thirty-two, and a bachelor. Mr. Weg, I love her. Mr. Weg, she is worthy of being loved by a potentate. Here, Silas is rather alarmed by Mr. Venus's springing to his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat-colour. But Mr. Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying with the calmness of despair, 'She objects to the business.' 'Does she know the profits of it?' 'She knows the profits of it. But she don't appreciate the art of it, and she objects to it. 'I do not wish,' she writes in her own handwriting, 'to regard myself nor yet to be regarded in that bony light.' Mr. Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of the deepest desolation. 'And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr. Weg, only to see that there's no look out when he's out there. I sit here of a night, surrounded by the lovely trophies of the art, or are they done for me?' Ruined me, brought me to the pass of being informed that she does not wish to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in that bony light. Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr. Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so. 'It lowers me when I'm equally lowered all over; lethargy sets in. By sticking to it till one or two in the morning I get oblivion. Don't let me detain you, Mr. Weg, I'm not company for any one.' 'It is not on that account,' says Silas rising, 'but because I've got an appointment, it's time I was at Harmon's.' 'They,' said Mr. Venus, 'harmons up, that will bridge way,' Mr. Weg admits that he is bound for that port. 'You ought to be in a good thing if you've worked yourself in there. There's lots of money going there.' 'To think,' says Silas, 'that you should catch it up so quick, and now about it. Wonderful. Not at all, Mr. Weg. The old gentleman wanted to know the nature and worth of everything that was found in the dust, and many's the bone and feather and whatnot that he's brought to me.' 'Really now,' said he. 'Yes, dear me, dear me, and he's buried quite in this neighbourhood, you know, over yonder. Mr. Weg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by responsibly nodding his head. He also follows with his eyes the tops of Venus' head as if to seek a direction to over yonder. 'I took an interest in that discovery in the river,' says Venus. She hadn't written her cutting refusal at that time. 'I got up there. Never mind, though.' He had raised the candle at arm's length towards one of the dark shells, and Mr. Weg had turned to look when he broke off. The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust mounds. I suppose there was nothing in him. Probably you know, Mr. Weg. 'Nothing in him,' says Weg, who has never heard a word of this before. 'Don't let me detain you. Good night.' The unfortunate Mr. Venus gives him a shake of the hand, with a shake of his own head, drooping down in his chair, proceeds to pour himself out more tea. Mr. Weg, looking back over his shoulder as he pulls the door open by the strap, notices that the movement so shakes the crazy shop, and so shakes the momentary flair out of the candle, as at the baby's Hindu, African, and British, the human weariness, the French gentleman, the green glass-eyed cats, the dogs, the ducks, and all the rest of the collection, show, for an instant, as if paralytically animated, while even poor little cock-robin, at Mr. Venus' elbow, turns over on his innocent side. Next moment Mr. Weg is stumping under the gas-lights and through the mud. End Book 1 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Mr. Boffin in Consultation Who, so ever, had gone out of Fleet Street into the temple at the date of this history, and had wandered disconsulate about the temple until he stumbled on a dismal churchyard, and had looked up at the dismal windows commanding that churchyard, until, at the most dismal window of them all, he saw a dismal boy. Would in him have beheld, at one grand, comprehensive swoop of the eye, the managing clerk, junior clerk, common law clerk, conveyance in clerk, chancery clerk, every refinement and department of the clerk, of Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, eer while, called in the newspapers, eminent solicitor. Mr. Boffin, having been several times in communication with this clerkly essence, both on its own ground and at the bar, had no difficulty in identifying it when he saw it up in its dusty eery. To the second floor on which the window was situated, he ascended, much preoccupied in mind, by the uncertainties besetting the Roman Empire, and much regretting the death of the amiable Pertinax, who only last night had left the imperial affairs in a state of great confusion, by falling a victim to the fury of the Praetorian guards. "Morning, morning, morning!" said Mr. Boffin, with a wave of his hand, as the officer was opened by the dismal boy, whose appropriate name was Blight. "Governor, inn?" Mr. Lightwood gave you an appointment, sir, I think. "I don't want him to give it, you know," returned Mr. Boffin, "I'll pay my way, my boy." "No doubt, sir. Would you all inn?" Mr. Lightwood ain't in at the present moment, by expecting back very shortly. "Would you take your seat in Mr. Lightwood's room, sir, while I look over our appointment-book?" Young Blight made a great show of fetching from his desk a long, thin manuscript volume with a brown paper cover, and running his finger down the day's appointments, murmuring, "Mr. Ags, Mr. Bags, Mr. Cags, Mr. Dags, Mr. Fags, Mr. Gags, Mr. Boffin." "Yes, sir," cried Rite. "You are a little before your time, sir. Mr. Lightwood will be in directly." "I'm not an hurry," said Mr. Boffin. "Thank you, sir. I'll take the opportunity, if you please, of entering your name in our callers' book for the day." Young Blight made another great show of changing the volume, taking up a pen, sucking it, dipping it, and running over previous entries before he wrote as, "Mr. Allie, Mr. Bally, Mr. Callie, Mr. Dally, Mr. Fally, Mr. Gally, Mr. Hallie, Mr. Lally, Mr. Mally, and Mr. Boffin." "Strict system here, eh, my lad?" said Mr. Boffin, as he was booked. "Yes, sir," returned the boy, "I couldn't get on without it." By which he probably meant that his mind would have been shattered to pieces without this fiction of an occupation, wearing in his solitary confinement no fetters that he could polish, and being provided with no drinking cap that he could carve, he had fallen on the device of ringing alphabetical changes into the two volumes in question, or of entering vast numbers of persons out of the directory as transacting business with Mr. Lightwood. It was the more necessary for his spirits, because, being of a sensitive temperament, he was apt to consider it personally disgraceful to himself that his master had no clients. "How long have you been in the law now?" asked Mr. Boffin, with a pounce and his usual inquisitive way. "I've been in the law now, sir, about three years. Must have been as good as born in it," said Mr. Boffin, with admiration. "Do you like it?" "I... don't mind it much," returned Young Blight, heaving a sigh as if its bitterness were passed. "What wages do you get?" "Half what art you'd wish," replied Young Blight. "What's the how that you could wish?" "15 chillings a week," said the boy. "About... how long might it take you now, at every rate of going, to be a judge?" asked Mr. Boffin, after surveying his small stature in silence. The boy answered that he had not yet quite worked out that little calculation. "I suppose... there's nothing to prevent your going for it," said Mr. Boffin. The boy virtually replied, that as he had the honour to be a Britain who never, never, never, there was nothing to prevent his going in for it. Yet he seemed inclined to suspect that there might be something to prevent his coming out with it. "Would a couple of pound help you up at all?" asked Mr. Boffin. On this head, Young Blight had no doubt whatever, so Mr. Boffin made him a present of that sum of money, and thanked him for his attention to his Mr. Boffin's affairs, which he added were now he believed as good as settled. Then Mr. Boffin, with his stick at his ear, like a familiar spirit, explaining the office to him, sat staring at a little bookcase of law-practice and law-reports, and at a window, and at an empty blue bag, and at a stick of ceiling wax, and a pen, and a box of wafers, and an apple, and a writing-pad, all very dusty, and at a number of inky smears and blots, and at an imperfectly disguised gun-case pretending to be something legal, and at an iron-box-labeled, harmonistate, until Mr. Lighter had appeared. Mr. Lighter had explained that he came from the proctors with whom he had been engaged in transacting Mr. Boffin's affairs. "And they seem to have taken a deal out of you," said Mr. Boffin, with commiseration. Mr. Lighter had, without explaining that his weariness was chronic, proceeded with his exposition that all forms of law, having been at length complied with, will of harm and deceased, having been proved, death of harm and next inheriting, having been proved, and etc., and so forth, court of chancery, having been moved, and etc., and so forth, he, Mr. Lighter had now the gratification, honour and happiness, again and etc., and so forth, of congratulating Mr. Boffin on coming into possession as residualy, leggity, of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds, standing in the books of the governor and the company of the Bank of England, again and etc., and so forth. And what is particularly eligible in the property, Mr. Boffin, is that it involves no trouble. There are no estates to manage, no rent to return so much percent upon in bad times, which is an extremely dear way of getting your name into the newspapers, no voters to become parboiled in hot water with, no agents to take the cream off the milk before it comes to table. You could put the hole in a cash-box tomorrow morning, and take it with you, say, to the rocky mountains, inasmuch as every man, concluded Mr. Lightwood with an indolent smile, appears to be under a fatal spell which obliges him sooner or later to mention that rocky mountains in a tone of extreme familiarity to some other man. I hope you have excused by pressing you into the service of that gigantic range of geographical boars. Without following this last remark very closely, Mr. Boffin castes perplexed gaze first at the ceiling and then at the carpet. "Well," he remarked, "I don't know what to say about it, I'm sure, I was almost as well as I was. It's a great lot to take care of." "My dear Mr. Boffin, then don't take care of it." "A," said that gentleman, "speaking now," returned Mortimer, "with the irresponsible imbecility of a private individual, and not with the profundity of a professional advisor, I should say that if the circumstance of its being too much weighs upon your mind, you have the haven of consolation open to you that you can easily make it less. And if you should be apprehensive of the trouble of doing so, there is the further haven of consolation that any number of people will take the trouble off your hands." "Well, I don't quite see it," retorted Mr. Boffin, still perplexed. "That's not satisfactory, you know, what you're saying. "Is anything satisfactory, Mr. Boffin?" asked Mortimer, raising his eyebrows. "I used to find it so," answered Mr. Boffin, with a wistful look. "While I was foreman at the bow-er, before it was the bow-er, I considered the business very satisfactory. The old man was an awful tartar, saying it I'm sure without disrespect to his memory, but the business was a pleasant one to look after. From before daylight to past dock, "It's almost a pity," said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his ear, "that he ever went and made so much money. It would have been better for him, if he hadn't so given himself up to it. It may depend upon it, making the discovery all of a sudden, that he found it a great lot to take care of." Mr. Lightwood coughed, not convinced. "And, speaking of satisfactory," pursued Mr. Boffin, "why, Lord Savers, when we come to take it at pieces, bit by bit, where is the satisfactoryness of the money as yet? When the old man does write the poor boy, after all, the poor boy gets no good of it. He gets made away with, at the moment when he's left in, as one might say, the cap and saucer to his lips. Mr. Lightwood, how now named to you, that on behalf of the dear boy, me and Mrs. Boffin, have stood out against the old man, times out a number, till he has called us every name he could lay his tongue to. I have seen him, after Mrs. Boffin has given him a mind, respecting the claims of the natural affections, catch off Mrs. Boffin's bonnet. He wore, in general, a black straw, purchased his mat of convenience on the top of her head, and sent it spinning across the yard. "I have, indeed. And once, when he did this, in a manner that amounted to personal, I should have given him a rattler for himself, if Mrs. Boffin hadn't thrown herself but took us, and received flash on a temple, which dropped her, Mr. Lightwood, dropped her. Mr. Lightwood murmured, equal on her, Mrs. Boffin's head and heart. You understand? I name this," pursued Mr. Boffin, "to show you, now the affairs are wound up, that me and Mrs. Boffin have ever stood, as we were, in Christian honour bound, the children's friend. Me and Mrs. Boffin stood the poor girl's friend. Me and Mrs. Boffin stood the poor boy's friend. Me and Mrs. Boffin, up and face the old man, when we momentarily expected to be turned out for our pains. Mr. Mrs. Boffin," said Mr. Boffin, lowering his voice, "she mightn't wish it mentioned. Now she's fashionable, but she went so far as to tell him in my presence he was a flint deartied reskill." Mr. Lightwood murmured, "Vigorous sex and spirit, Mrs. Boffin's ancestors, Bowman, action court and cressy. The last time me and Mrs. Boffin saw the poor boy," said Mr. Boffin, warming, as fat usually does with the tendency to melt, he was a child of seven-year-old. For when he came back to make intercession for his sister, me and Mrs. Boffin were away overlooking a country contract which was to be sifted before carted, and he was come and gone in a single hour. I say he was a child of seven-year-old. He was going away, all alone and forlorn to that foreign school, and he come into our place, sit you right up the yard of the present bar, to have a warm in our fire. There was his little scanty travelling clothes upon him. There was his little scanty box, outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to carry for him, down to the steamboat, as the old man wouldn't hear of allowing a six-pence coach money. Mrs. Boffin, then, quite a young woman, and a picture of a full-blown rose. A man's been buyer, nears down at the fire, warms her two open hands, and four to rub in his cheeks. But, seeing the tears come into the child's eyes, the tears come fast into her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was protecting him, and cries to me, "I'd give the wide, wide world I would to run away with him. I don't say but what it kept me, and but what it at the same time heightened my feelings of admiration for Mrs. Boffin." The poor child clinks to her for a while, as she clinks to him, and then, when the old man calls, he says, "I must go. God bless you." And for a moment, rest his art against a bosom, and looks up at both of us as if it was in pain, in agony. "Such a look!" I went aboard with him. I gave him first what little treat I thought he'd like, and I left him, when he had fallen asleep in his birth, and I came back to Mrs. Boffin. But to her what I would, of how I had left him, it all went for nothing, for, according to her thoughts, he never changed that look that he had looked up at us, too. But it did one piece of good. Mrs. Boffin and me had no child of our own, and had something I has wished that how we had one. But not now. We might both of us die," says Mrs. Boffin, and other eyes might see that lonely look in our child. So, of a night, when it was very cold, or when the wind roared or the rain dripped heavy, she would wake, sobbing, and call out in a fluster, "Don't you see the poor child's face? How shalt the poor child, till in course of years, it gently wore out, as many things do?" "My dear Mr. Boffin, everything wears to rags," said Mortimer, with a light laugh. "I won't go so far as to say everything," returned Mr. Boffin, and whom his manner seemed to grate. "Because there's some things that I never found among the dust." "Balsa?" "So, Mrs. Boffin and me, grow older and older, and the old man's service, living and working pretty hard in it, till the old man is discovered, dead in his bed. Then Mrs. Boffin and me seal up his box, always standing on the table at the side of his bed, and having frequently heared tale of the temple as a spot where lawyer's dust is contracted for. I come down here, in search of a lawyer to advise, and I see your young man, up at his present elevation, chopping at the flies on the windowsill with his penknife, and I give him a hoie. Not then having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that means, camp to gain the honour. Then you, and the gentleman in the uncomfortable neckcloth, under the little archway in St. Paul's Churchyard, Doctor's Commons," observed Lightwood, "I understood it was another name," said Mr. Boffin, pausing, "but, you know best, there you, and Dr. Scommons, you don't work, and you do the thing that's proper, and you and Dr. S take steps of finding out the poor boy, at last you do find out the poor boy, and me and Mrs. Boffin often exchange the observation we shall see him again under happy circumstances. But it was never to be, and the want of sector's factor in us is that after all the money never gets to him." Invited gets, remarked Lightwood with a languid inclination of the head, into excellent hands. It gets into the hands of me and Mrs. Boffin, only this very day and hour, and that's what I am working round to. Having waited for this day and hour a purpose, Mr. Lightwood, has been a wicked, cruel murder. By that murder, me and Mrs. Boffin mysteriously profit. For the apprehension and conviction of the murderer, we offer a reward of one tithe of the property, a reward of ten thousand pound, a reward of ten thousand pound. Mr. Boffin, it's too much. Mr. Lightwood, me and Mrs. Boffin affix the sum together, and we stand to it. But let me represent to you, returned Lightwood. Speaking now with professional profundity, and not with the individual imbecility, at the offer of such an immense reward as a temptation to forced suspicion, forced construction of circumstances, strained accusation, a whole toolbox of edged tools. "Well," said Mr. Boffin, a little staggered, "that's the sum we put on one side for the purpose. Whether it shall be outwardly declared, in the new notices, there must now be put about in our names. In your name, Mr. Boffin, in your name, very well, in my name, which is the same as Mrs. Boffin's, and means both of us, is to be considered in join him up. But this is the first instruction that I, as the owner of the property, give to my lawyer on coming into it." "Your lawyer, Mr. Boffin," returned Mr. Lightwood, making a very short note of it with a very rusty pen, "has the gratification of taking the instruction. There is another. There is just one other, and no more. Make me, as compact a little will, as can be reconciled with tightness. Leave in the old of the property, to my beloved wife, Enriety Boffin, sell executives. Make it as short as you can, using those words, but make it tight." At some loss to fathom Mr. Boffin's notions of a tight will, Lightwood felt his way. "I beg your pardon, but professional profundity must be exact. When you say 'tight,' I mean 'tight,'," Mr. Boffin explained, "exactly so, and nothing can be more laudable. But is the tightness to bind Mrs. Boffin to any and what conditions? 'Bine, Mrs. Boffin,' interposed her husband, 'No! What are you thinking of? What I want is, to make it all hers so tight, as there are old of it, can't be loosed. 'Hers, freely, to do what she likes with? Hers, absolutely?' 'Absolutely,' repeated Mr. Boffin, with a short, sturdy laugh, 'haha, I should think so. There will be answer in me to begin to borrow Mrs. Boffin at this time of day.' So that instruction, too, was taken by Mr. Lightwood, and Mr. Lightwood, having taken it, was in the act of showing Mr. Boffin out, when Mr. Eugene Rayburn, almost just startled him in the doorway. Consequently, Mr. Lightwood said in his cool manner, "Let me make you two known to one another," and further signified that Mr. Rayburn was counsel learned in the law, and that partly in the way of business and partly in the way of pleasure he had imparted to Mr. Rayburn some of the interesting facts of Mr. Boffin's biography. 'A day lighted,' said Eugene, though he didn't look so, 'to know Mr. Boffin.' 'Thank you, sir, thank you,' returned that gentleman, 'and how do you, like the law?' 'Not particularly,' returned Eugene, 'to drive you, eh?' 'Well, I suppose you want some years of sticking, too, before you ask, to it? Nothing like work! Look at the bees!' 'I beg your pardon,' returned Eugene with a reluctant smile, 'but will you excuse my mentioning, that I always protest against being referred to the bees?' 'Do you,' said Mr. Boffin. 'I object on principle,' said Eugene, 'as a biped.' 'As a what?' asked Mr. Boffin, 'as a two-footed creature. I object on principle as a two-footed creature to being constantly referred to insects and four-footed creatures. I object to being required to model my proceedings, according to the proceedings the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the camel. I fully admit that the camel, for instance, is an excessively temperate person, but he has several stomachs to entertain himself with, and I have only one. Besides, I not fitted up with a convenient cool salad to keep my drink in. 'But I said, you know,' urged Mr. Boffin, rather as a loss for an answer, 'the bee!' 'Exactly. And may I represent to you, that it's injudicious to say 'the bee,' for the whole case is assumed, conceding for a moment that there is any analogy between a bee and a man in a shirt and pantalooms which I deny, and that it is settled that the man is to learn from the bee, which I also deny. The question still remains, what is he to learn, to imitate or to avoid? When your friends, the bees, worry themselves to that highly flattered extent about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchial movement, are we men to learn the greatness of tough hunting, or the littleness of the court-circular? I'm not clear, Mr. Boffin, but that the hive may be satirical. 'At all events, they work,' said Mr. Boffin, 'yes,' returned Eugene disparagingly, 'they work. But don't you think they overdo it? They work so much more than they need. They make so much more than they can eat. They are so incessantly boring and buzzing at their one idea, till death comes upon them. But don't you think they overdo it? And are human labourers to have no holidays because of the bees? And am I never to have change of air because the bees don't?' Mr. Boffin, I think honey excellent at breakfast. But, regarded in the light of my conventional schoolmaster and moralist, I protest against the tyrannical humberg of your friend, the bee, with the highest respect for you. 'Thank you,' said Mr. Boffin. 'Morning, morning!' But the worthy Mr. Boffin jogged away with the comfortless impression he could have dispensed with, that there was a deal of unsectus factoriness in the world, besides what he had recalled as appertaining to the Harmon property. And he was still jogging along Fleet Street in this condition of mind, when he became aware that he was closely tracked and observed by a man of genteel appearance. 'Now then,' said Mr. Boffin, stopping short with his meditations brought to an abrupt check, 'what's the next article?' 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Boffin. My name, too, eh? How did he come by it? I don't know you.' 'Oh, no, sir. You don't know me.' Mr. Boffin looked full at the man, and a man looked full at him. 'No,' said Mr. Boffin, after a glance at the pavement, as if it were made of faces and he were trying to match the man's. 'I don't know you.' 'I am nobody,' said the stranger, 'and not likely to be known. But Mr. Boffin's wealth—oh, it's got about already as it,' muttered Mr. Boffin, and his romantic manner of acquiring it make him conspicuous. You were pointed out to me the other day. 'Well,' said Mr. Boffin, 'I should say. Oh, is it a disappointment to you? When I was pointed out, if your politeness would allow you to confess it, for I am well aware, I'm not much to look at. What might you want with me? Not in the law, are you? No, sir. No information to give for a reward? No, sir. There may have been a momentary mentling in the face of the man as he made the last answer, but it passed directly. 'If I don't mistake, you have followed me from my lawyers and tried to fix my attention. Say out, have you, or haven't you?' demanded Mr. Boffin, rather angry. 'Yes. Why, have you? If you will allow me to walk beside you, Mr. Boffin, I will tell you. Would you object to turn aside into this place, I think it's called Clifford's Inn, where we can hear one another better than in the roaring street?' 'Now,' thought Mr. Boffin, 'if he proposes a game at Skittles, or meets a country gentleman just come into property, or produces any article of jewelry he has found, I'll knock him down.' With this discrete reflection, and carrying his stick in his arms much as punch carries his, Mr. Boffin turned Clifford's Inn, aforesaid. 'Mr. Boffin, I happened to be in Chansery Lane this morning, and I saw you going along before me. I took the liberty of following you, trying to make up my mind to speak to you, till you went into your lawyers. Then I waited outside till you came out. You quite sound like Skittles, nor yet country-gentlemen, nor yet jewelry, thought Mr. Boffin, but there's no knowing. I'm afraid my object is a bold one. I'm afraid it has little of the usual practical world about it, but I venture it. If you ask me, or if you ask yourself, which is more likely, what emboldens me, I answer, I have been strongly assured that you are a man of rectitude and plain dealing, with the soundest of soundhearts, and that you are blessed in a wife distinguished by the same qualities. Your information is true, of Mrs. Boffin, anyhow, was Mr. Boffin's answer, as he surveyed his new friend again. There was something repressed in the strange man's manner, and he walked with his eyes on the ground, though conscious, for all that, of Mr. Boffin's observation, and he spoke in a subdued voice. But his words came easily, and his voice was agreeable in tone, albeit constrained. When I add, I can discern for myself what the general tongue says of you, that you are quite unspoiled by fortune and not uplifted, I trust you were not, as a man of an open nature, suspect that I mean to flatter you, but will believe that all I mean is to excuse myself, these being my only excuse, for my present intrusion. "How much?" thought Mr. Boffin. "It must be carried a money." "How much?" "You will probably change your man of living, Mr. Boffin, in your changed circumstances. You will probably keep a larger house, have many matters to arrange, and be beset by numbers of correspondence. If you would try me, as your secretary?" "As what?" cried Mr. Boffin with his eyes wide open, "your secretary." "Well," said Mr. Boffin under his breath, "that's a queer thing." "Or," pursued the stranger, wondering Mr. Boffin's wonder, "if you would try me, as your man of business, under any name, I know you would find me faithful and grateful, and I hope you would find me useful. You may naturally think that my immediate object is money. Not so, for I would willingly serve you a year, two years, any term you might appoint, before that should begin to be a consideration between us." "Where do you come from?" asked Mr. Boffin. "I come," returned the other, meeting his eye, "from many countries." Boffin's acquaintances with the names and situations of foreign lands being limited in extent, and somewhat confused in quality, he shaped his next question on an elastic model. "From any particular place, I have been in many places. What have you been?" asked Mr. Boffin. Here again he made no great advance, for the reply was, "I have been a student and a traveller." "But if it ain't a liberty to pump it out," said Mr. Boffin, "what you do for your living?" "I have mentioned," returned the other with another look at him, and a smile, "what I aspire to do. I have been superseded as to some slight intentions I had, and I may say that I have now to begin life." Not very well knowing how to get rid of this applicant, and feeling the more embarrassed because his manner in appearance claimed a delicacy in which the worthy Mr. Boffin feared he himself might be deficient. That gentleman glanced into the mouldy little plantation, or cat preserve, of Clifford's Inn, as it was that day in search of a suggestion. Sparrows were there, cats were there, dry rot and wet rot were there, but it was not otherwise a suggestive spot. "All this time," said the stranger, producing a little pocket-book and taking out a card, "I have not mentioned my name. My name is Rokesmith. I lodge at one Mr. Wilfers at Holloway. Mr. Boffin stared again. "Father of Miss Bella Wilfers?" said he. My landlord has a daughter named Bella. Yes, no doubt. Now, this name had been more or less in Mr. Boffin's thoughts all the morning, and for days before. Therefore, he said, "Let singular, too!" Unconsciously staring again passed all bounds of good manners with the card in his hand. "Thou, by the by, I suppose it was one of that family that pined me out?" "No. I have never been in the streets with one of them." "They heard me talk of among them, though?" "No. I occupy my own rooms, and have held scarcely any communication with them." "Oh, don't I know, don't?" said Mr. Boffin. "Well, sir. To tell you the truth, I don't know what to say to you." "Say nothing," returned Mr. Rokesmith. "Allow me to call on you in a few days. I am not so unconscionable as to think it likely that you would accept me on trust at first sight and take me out of the very street. Let me come to you, for your further opinion, at your leisure." "That's there, and I don't object," said Mr. Boffin. "But it must be all condition, and it is fully understood that I no more know that I shall ever be in want of any gentleman as secretary. It was. Secretary," he said, "wasn't it?" "Yes." Again Mr. Boffin's eyes opened wide, and he stared at the applicant from head to foot, repeating "queer." "You're sure it was Secretary, are you?" "I am sure," I said so. "As, uh, Secretary," repeated Mr. Boffin, meditating upon the word, "are I no more know that I ever want a secretary, or whatnot? Then I do that, or shall ever be in want of the man in the room. Me and Mrs. Boffin have not even settled that we shall make any change in our way of life. Mrs. Boffin's inclinations certainly do tend towards fashion, but, being already set up in a fashionable way at the Bower, she may not make further alterations. However, sir, as you don't press yourself, I wish to meet you so far as saying by all means caught the Bower, if you like. Call in the course of a week or two. At the same time, I will consider that I ought to name, in addition to what I have already named, that I have in my employment a literary man, with a wooden leg, as I have no thoughts aparting from." "I regret to hear I am in some sort anticipated," Mr. Rokesmith answered, evidently having heard it with surprise. But perhaps other duties might arise. "You see," returned Mr. Boffin, with a confidential sense of dignity, "as to my literary man's duties, they are clear. Professionally he declines and he falls, and as a friend he drops it in a poetry." Without observing that these duties seemed my no means clear to Mr. Rokesmith's astonished comprehension, Mr. Boffin went on, "and now, sir, I wish you good day. You can call the Bower any time in a week or two. It's not above a mile or so from you, and your landlord can direct you to it. But, as he may not know it, by its new name of Boffin's Bower, say when you inquire of him, "It armons, will you?" "Armoons," repeated Mr. Rokesmith, seeming to have caught the sound imperfectly, "hah, mons, how do you spell it?" "Why, as to the spelling of it," returned Mr. Boffin, with great presence of mind, "that's your look out. Armons is all you've got to say to him. Morning, morning, morning." And so departed without looking back. End Book 1 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Mr. and Mrs. Boffin in consultation By taking himself straight homeward, Mr. Boffin, without further let or hindrance, arrived at the Bower, and gave Mrs. Boffin in a walking dress of black velvet and feathers, like a morning coach horse, an account of all he had said and done since breakfast. "This brings us round, my dear," he then pursued, "to the question we left unfinished, namely whether there's to be any new go-in for fashion." "Now, I'll tell you what I want, Nordie," said Mrs. Boffin, smoothing her dress with an air of immense enjoyment. "I want society." "Fashionable society, my dear." "Yes," cried Mrs. Boffin, laughing with the glee of a child. "Yes! It's no good, my being kept here like waxwork. Is it now?" "People have to pay to see waxwork, my dear," returned her husband, "whereas, though you'd be cheap at the same money? The neighbours is wanting to see you for nothing." "But it don't answer," said the cheer for Mrs. Boffin. "When we worked like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have left work off, we have left off, suiting one another." "What do you think of beginning work again?" Mr. Boffin hinted. "Out of the question. We have come into a great fortune, and we must do what's right by our fortune. We must act up to it." Mr. Boffin, who had a deep respect for his wife's intuitive wisdom, replied, though rather pensively, "I suppose we must." "It's never been acted up to yet, and consequently no good as cam of it." Mr. Boffin said Mrs. Boffin. "A-two? To the present time?" Mr. Boffin ascended, with his formal pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. "I hope good, may be coming of it in the future time. Towards which? What's your views, our lady?" Mrs. Boffin, a smiling creature, broad of figure and simple of nature, with her hands folded in her lap and with bucks and creases in her throat, proceeded to expand her views. "I say, a good house in a good neighbourhood. Good things about us. Good living and good society. I say, live like our means without extravagance, and be happy." "Yes, I say be happy to," ascended the still pensive, Mr. Boffin. "Lore of mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. Boffin, laughing and clapping her hands and gaily rocking herself to and fro. "We're now, I think, of me, in a light yellow chariot and pair, with silver boxes to the wheels." "Oh, you were thinking of that, or do you, my dear?" "Yes!" cried the delighted creature, and with a footman up behind, with a bar across, to keep his legs from being pulled, and with the couch man up in front, sinking down into a seat, picking up for three of him, all covered with a palt tree in green and white, and with two bay horses tossing their heads and stepping higher than they trot long ways, and with you and me leaning back inside as grand as nine pence, "Oh, my," hee hee hee. Mrs. Boffin clapped her hands again, rocked herself again, beat her feet upon the floor, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. "And, what, my old lady?" inquired Mr. Boffin, when he also had sympathetically laughed, "What's your views on the subject of the bar?" "Shut it up. Don't part with it. That puts somebody in it to keep it." "Any other views?" "Nardly," said Mrs. Boffin, coming from her fashionable sofa to his side on the plain settle, and hooking her comfortable arm through his. "Next, I think, and I really have been thinking early and late, of the disappointed girl. Who that was so cruelly disappointed, you know, both of her husband and his riches? Don't you think we might do something for her, ever, to live with us, or something of that sort?" "Nervera wants thought of the way of doing it," cried Mr. Boffin, smiting the table in his admiration, "What a thinking steam engine, this old lady is! And she don't know how she does it, not of a dusty engine!" Mrs. Boffin pulled his nearest ear, an acknowledgement of this piece of philosophy, and then said, gradually toning down to a motherly strain, "You asked, and not least, I've taken a fancy. You've remembered to your little John Arman before he went to school, over Yondra across the yard at our fire, now that he's passed all benefit of the money, and it's come to us. I should like to find some orphan child, and take the boy, and adopt him, and give him John's name, and provide for him. Somehow it would make me easier, our fancy, say it, it's only a whim, but I don't say so," interposed her husband, "Now, but the deary, if you did, or should be a beast if I did," her husband interposed again, "That's as much as to say you agree? Oh, good, and kind of you, and like you, deary. And don't you begin to find it pleasant now?" Had Mrs. Buffon once more radiant in her cumbly way from head to foot, and once more smoothing her dress with immense enjoyment, "Don't you begin to find it pleasant already? Just think that a child will be my brighter and better and happier, because of that poor sad child that day. And isn't he pleasant to know that the good will be done, with the poor sad child's own money?" "Yes, and it's pleasant to know that you are Mrs. Buffon," said her husband, "and it's been a pleasant thing to know, it's many and many a year." It was ruined to Mrs. Buffon's aspirations, but, having so spoken, they sat side by side a hopelessly unfashionable pair. These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so far on in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and desire to do right. Ten thousand weaknesses and absurdities might have been detected in the breasts of both, ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman. But the hard, wrathful, and sordid nature that had rung as much work out of them as could be got in their best days, for as little money as could be paid to hurry on their worst, had never been so warped, but that it knew their moral straightness and respected it. In its own despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it had done so. And this is the eternal law, for evil often sub-short at itself and dies with the doer of it, but good never. Through his most inveterate purposes, the dead jailer of Harmony Jail had known these two faithful servants to be honest and true. While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt. So even while he was their griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had written a name down in his will. So even while it was his daily declaration that he must trust it all mankind, and solely indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance to himself, he was a certain these two people surviving him would be trustworthy in all things from the greatest to the least, as he was that he must surely die. Mr. Mrs. Boffin, sitting side by side, with fashion withdrawn to an immeasurable distance, fell to discussing how they could best find their orphan. Mrs. Boffin suggested advertisement in the newspapers, requesting orphans answering the next description to apply at the bower on a certain day. But Mr. Boffin wisely apprehending obstruction of the neighbouring thoroughfares by orphan swarms, this cause was negative. Mrs. Boffin next suggested application to their clergyman for a likely orphan. Mr. Boffin, thinking better of this scheme, they resolved to call upon the Reverend Gentle Nerd once, and to take the same opportunity of making acquaintance with Miss Bella Wilfer. In order these visits might be visits of state, Mrs. Boffin's equipage was ordered out. This consisted of a long hammer-headed old horse, formerly used in the business, attached to a four-wheeled chaise of the same period which had long been exclusively used by the harmony jail poultry as the favourite laying-place of several discrete hens. An unmoated application of corn to the horse, and a paint and varnish to the carriage, when both fell in as a part of the Boffin legacy, had made what Mr. Boffin considered a neat turn-out of the whole, and a driver being added in the person of a long, hammer-headed young man was a very good match for the horse, left nothing to be desired. He too had been formerly used in the business, but was now entombed by an honest, jobbing tailor of the district and a perfect sepulcher of coated-gaters sealed with ponderous buttons. Behind this domestic Mr. and Mrs. Boffin took their seats in the back compartment of the vehicle, which was sufficiently commodious, but had an undignified and alarming tendency in getting over a rough crossing to hick up itself away from the front compartment. On there being described, emerging from the gates of the bar, the neighbourhood turned out a dawn-window to salute the Boffins. Among those who were ever and again left behind, staring after the equippage, were many youthful spirits who hailed in its centaurium tones, with such congratulations as "Nardee Boffin, Boffins Mani," down with the dust "Boffin," and other similar compliments. These the hammer-headed young man took in such ill part that he often impaired the majesty of the progress by pulling up short and making as though he would alight to exterminate the offenders, a purpose in which he only allowed himself to be dissuaded after long and lively arguments with his employers. At length the bar-district was left behind, and the peaceful dwelling of the Reverend Frank Milvey was gained. The Reverend Frank Milvey's abode was a very modest abode, because his income was a very modest income. He was officially accessible to every blundering old woman who had incoherent to bestow upon him, and readily received the Boffins. He was quite a young man, expensively educated and wretchedly paid, with quite a young wife and half a dozen quite young children. He was under the necessity of teaching and translating from the classics to eke out his scanty means, yet was generally expected to have more time to spare than the idlest person in the parish and more money than the richest. He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies of his life, with a kind of conventional submission that was almost slavish, and any daring layman who would have adjusted such burdens as his more decently and graciously would have had small help from him. With a ready patient face and manner, and yet with a latent smile that showed a quick enough observation of Mrs. Boffins' dress, Mr. Milvey in his little bookroom charged with sounds and tries as though the six children above were coming down through the ceiling, and the roasting leg of mutton below were coming up through the floor, listened to Mrs. Boffins' statement of her want of an orphan. "I think," said Mr. Milvey, "that you have never had a child of your own, Mr. Mrs. Boffins." "Neither." "But, like the kings and queens in the fairy tales, I suppose you have a wish for one." "In a general way, yes." Mr. Milvey smiled again as he remarked to himself, "Those kings and queens were always wishing for children. It occurring to him, perhaps, that they had been curates, their wishes might have tended in the opposite direction." "I think," he pursued, "we had a better take, Mrs. Milvey, into our council. She is indispensable to me. If you please, I'll call her." "So, Mr. Milvey called, 'Margo Ritter, my dear.' And Mrs. Milvey came down. A pretty bright little woman, something worn by anxiety, who had repressed many pretty tastes and bright fancies, and substituted in their stead, schools, soup, flannel, coals, and all the weekday cares and Sunday coughs of a large population young and old. As gallantly head Mr. Milvey repressed much in himself that naturally belonged to his old studies and old fellow students, and taken up among the poor and their children with the hard crumbs of life. "Mr. and Mrs. Boffins, my dear, who is good a fortune you have heard of." Mrs. Milvey, with the most unaffected grace in the world, congratulated them, and was glad to see them. Yet her engaging face, being an open as well as a perceptive one, was not without her husband's latent smile. "Mrs. Boffins wishes to adopt a little boy, my dear." Mrs. Milvey looked rather alarmed, her husband added, "An orphan, my dear." "Oh," said Mrs. Milvey reassured for her own little boys, "and I was thinking, a margarita, that perhaps old Mrs. Goody's grandchild might answer the purpose." "Oh, my dear Frank, I don't think that would do." "No." "Oh, no." The smiling Mrs. Boffins, feeling it encumbered on her to take part in the conversation, and being charmed with the emphatic little wife and her ready interest, here offered her acknowledgments and inquired what there was against him. "I don't think," said Mrs. Milvey, glancing at the reverend Frank, "and I believe my husband will agree with me when he considers it again, that you could possibly keep that orphan clean from snuff, because his grandmother takes so many ounces and drops it over him." "But he would not be living with his grandmother, then, margarita," said Mr. Milvey. "No, Frank, but it would be impossible to keep her from Mrs. Boffins' house, and the more there was her eaten drink there, the oftener she would go, and she is an inconvenient woman. I hope it's not uncharitable to remember that last Christmas Eve she drank eleven cups of tea and grumbled all the time, and she is not a grateful woman, Frank. You recollect her, addressing a crowd outside this house about her wrongs. When, one night, after he had gone to bed, she brought back the petticoat of a new flannel that had been given her, because it was too short." "That's true," said Mr. Milvey, "I don't think that would do. Would little Harrison—oh, Frank!" frustrated his emphatic wife. "He has no grand-mother, my dear." "No, but I don't think Mrs. Boffins would like an orphan who squints so much." "That's true again," said Mr. Milvey, becoming haggard with perplexity. "If a little girl would do?" "That's my dear Frank, Mrs. Boffins wants a boy." "That's true again," said Mr. Milvey, "Tom Bocker is a nice boy, thoughtfully." "But I doubt, Frank," Mrs. Milvey hinted after a little hesitation, "if Mrs. Boffins wants an orphan quite nineteen who drives a cart and waters the roads." Mr. Milvey referred the point to Mrs. Boffins in a look. On that smiling lady, shaking her black velvet bonnet and bows, he remarked in lower spirits, "Let's, uh, true again." "I am sure," said Mrs. Boffins, concerned at giving so much trouble, "that if I had known you would have taken so much pain, sir, and you, too, Mom, I don't think I would have come." "Pray, don't say that," urged Mrs. Milvey. "No, don't say that," assented Mr. Milvey, "because we are so much obliged to you for giving us the preference," which Mrs. Milvey confirmed, and really the kind, conscientious couple spoke as if they kept some profitable orphan warehouse and were personally patronized. "But it is a responsible trust," added Mr. Milvey, "and difficult to discharge. At the same time we are naturally very unwilling to lose the chance you so kindly give us, and if you could afford us a day or two to look about us, you know, Margherita, we might carefully examine the workhouse, and the infant school and your district." "To be sure," said the emphatic little wife, "we have orphans, I know," pursued Mr. Milvey quite with the air as if he might have added in stock, and quite as anxiously as if they were a great competition in the business, and he were afraid of losing an order, "over at the clay pits, but they are employed by relations or friends, and I am afraid it would come at last to a transaction in the way of barter, and even if you exchanged blankets for the child or books and firing, it would be impossible to prevent their being turned into liquor." Accordingly it was resolved that Mr. and Mrs. Milvey should search for an orphan lightly to suit, and as free as possible from the foregoing objections, and should communicate again with Mrs. Buffon. Then Mr. Buffon took the liberty of mentioning to Mr. Milvey that if Mr. Milvey would do him the kindness to be perpetually his banker to the extent of a £20 note or so to be expended without any reference to him he would be heartily obliged. At this both Mr. Milvey and Mrs. Milvey were quite as much pleased as if they had no wants of their own, but only knew what poverty was in the persons of other people, and so the interview terminated with satisfaction and good opinion on all sides. "Now, old lady," said Mr. Buffon, as they resumed their seats behind the hammer-headed horse of man, "having made a very agreeable visit there, we'll try Wilfers." It appeared, on their drawing up at the family gate, at to try Wilfers, was a thing more easily projected than done, on account of the extreme difficulty of getting into that establishment. Three pools of the bell producing no external result, though each was attended by audible sounds of scampering and rushing within. At the fourth tug, vindictively administered by the hammer-headed young man, this lavinia appeared, emerging from the house in an accidental manner with the bonnets and parasol, as designing to take a contemplative walk. The young lady was astonished to find visitors at the gate and expressed her feelings in appropriate action. "Here's Mr. and Mrs. Buffon!" growled the hammer-headed young man through the bars of the gate, and at the same time shaking it as if he were on view in a menagerie. "They've been here for half an hour." "Who did you say?" asked Miss Lavinia. "Mr. and Mrs. Buffon!" returned the young man, rising into a roar. Miss Lavinia chipped up the steps to the house-door, chipped down the steps of the key, chipped across the little garden, and opened the gate. "Please to walk in," said Miss Lavinia hortily, "our servant is out." Mr. and Mrs. Buffon, complying, and pausing in the little hall until Miss Lavinia came up to show them where to go next, perceived three pairs of listening legs upon the stairs above. Mrs. Wilfer's legs, Mrs. Beller's legs, Mr. George Sampson's legs. "Mr. and Mrs. Buffon, I think," said Lavinia, in a warning voice, strained attention on the part of Mrs. Wilfer's legs, of Miss Beller's legs, of Mr. George Sampson's legs. "Yes, Miss. If you step this way, down these stairs I'll let ma know," excited flight of Mrs. Wilfer's legs, of Miss Beller's legs, of Mr. George Sampson's legs. After waiting some quarter of an hour alone in the family sitting-room, which presented traces of having been so hastily arranged after a meal that one might have doubted whether it was made tidy for visitors or cleared for blind man's buff, Mr. and Mrs. Buffon became aware of the entrance of Mrs. Wilfer majestically faint and with a condescending stitch on her side, which was her company manner. "But pardon me," said Mrs. Wilfer, after the first salutations, and as soon as she had adjusted the handkerchief under her chin and waved her gloved hands, "To what am I indebted for this honour?" "To make sure of it, ma'am," returned Mr. Buffon, "perhaps you may be acquainted with the names of me and Mrs. Buffon, as having come into a certain property." "I have heard, sir," returned Mrs. Wilfer with a dignified bend of her head, "of such being the case." "And, I dare say, ma'am," pursued Mr. Buffon, while Mrs. Buffon added confirmatory nods and smiles, "you are not very much inclined to take kindly to us." "Aparten me," said Mrs. Wilfer, "to I am just to visit upon Mr. and Mrs. Buffon a calamity which was doubtless a dispensation." These words were rendered the more affected by a serenely heroic expression of suffering. "That's fairly meant, I am sure," remarked the honest Mr. Buffon. "Mrs. Buffon and me, ma'am, are plain people. And we don't want to pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round anything, because there's always a straight way to everything." Consequently, we make this call to say that we shall be glad to have the honour and pleasure of your daughter's acquaintance, and that we shall be rejoiced if your daughter will come to consider our house in the light of her home, equally with this. In short, we want to cheer your daughter, and to give her the opportunity of sharing such pleasures as we are a goat to take ourselves. We want to brisk her up, and brisk her about, and give her a change." "That's it," said the open heart of Mrs. Buffon. "No! Let's be comfortable!" Mrs. Wilfer bent her head in a distant manner to her lady visit earned, with majestic monotony replied to the gentleman. "Aparten me, I have several daughters, which of my daughters am I to understand is thus favoured by the kind intentions of Mr. Buffon and his lady?" "That you see," the ever-smiling Mrs. Buffon put in, "naturally Miss Beller, you know?" "Oh," said Mrs. Wilfer, with a severely unconvinced look. "My daughter, Beller, is accessible, and shall speak for herself." Then, opening the door a little way, simultaneously with the sound of scuttling outside it, the good lady made the proclamation, "The send Miss Beller to me," which proclamation, though grandly formal, and one might almost say heraldic, to hear, was in fact enunciated with her maternal eyes reputually glaring on that young lady in the flesh; and in so much of it that she was retiring the difficulty into the small closet under the stairs, apprehensive of the emergence of Mr. and Mrs. Buffon. "The advocacy of our W, my husband," Mrs. Wilfer explained, on resuming her seat, "keep him fully engaged in the city at this time of the day, or he would have had the honour of participating in your reception beneath our humble roof." "Very pleasant, premises," said Mr. Buffon cheerfully. "Pardon me, Sir," put on Mrs. Wilfer, correcting him, "it is the abode of conscious, though independent poverty." Of finding it rather difficult to pursue the conversation down this road, Mr. Mrs. Buffon sat staring at midair, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial, rarely paralleled in history, until Mrs. Beller appeared, whom Mrs. Wilfer presented, and to whom she explained the purpose of the visitors. "I am much obliged to you, I am sure," said Miss Beller, coldly shaking her curls, "but I doubt if I have the inclination to go out at all." "Veller," Mrs. Wilfer admonished her, "Veller, you must conquer this." "Yes. Do what your ma says and conquer it, my dear," urged Mrs. Buffon, "because we should be so glad to have you, and could you all much too pretty to keep yourself shut up?" Without the pleasant creature gave her a kiss, and patted her on her dimple chores. Mrs. Wilfer, sitting stiffly by, like a functionary presiding over an interview previous to an execution, "We are going to move into a nice house," said Mrs. Buffon, who was woman enough to compromise Mr. Buffon on that point, when he couldn't very well contest it, "and we are going to set up a nice cabbage, and we go everywhere and see everything, and you mustn't," seating Beller beside her and patting her hand, "you mustn't feel a dislike to us to begin with, because we couldn't help it, you know, my dear." With a natural tendency of youth to yield to candour and sweet temper, Miss Beller was so touched by the simplicity of this address that she frankly returned, Mrs. Buffon's kiss. Not at all to the satisfaction of that good woman of the world, her mother, who sought to hold the advantageous ground for obliging the Buffon's instead of being obliged. "My youngest daughter, Lavinia," said Mrs. Wilfer, glad to make a diversion, as that young lady appeared, "Mr. George Sampson, a friend of the family." The friend of the family was in that state of tender passion which bound him to regard everybody else as the foe of the family. He put the round head of his cane in his mouth like a stopper when he sat down, as if he felt himself full to the throat with the fronting sentiments, and he eyed the Buffons with implacable eyes. "If you like to bring your sister with you when you come to stay with us," said Mrs. Buffon, "of course we should be glad. The better you please yourself, Miss Beller, the better you please ask." "Oh, my consent is of no consequence at all, I suppose," cried Miss Lavinia. "Laffy," said her sister in a low voice, "have the goodness to be seen and not heard." "No, I won't," replied the sharp Lavinia, "I'm not a child to be taken notice of by strangers." "You are a child. I'm not a child. No, I'll be taken notice of. Bring your sister, indeed." "Lavinia," said Mrs. Wilfer, "hold." "I will not allow you to utter in my presence the absurd suspicion that any strangers I cannot watch their names can patronize my child. Do you dare to suppose you ridiculous girl?" At Mr. and Mrs. Buffon would enter those doors upon a patronizing errand, or if they did would remain within them only for one single instant while your mother had the strength yet remaining in her vital frame to request them to depart. You little know your mother if you presume to think so." "It's all very fine," Lavinia began to grumble, when Mrs. Wilfer repeated, "hold! I will not allow this. Do you not know what is due to guests? Do you not comprehend that in presuming to hint that this lady and gentleman could have any idea of patronizing any member of your family I cannot which you accuse them of an impertinent little lesson insane?" "Never mind me, and Mrs. Buffon, ma'am," said Mr. Buffon, smilingly, "we don't care." "Harden me, but I do," returned Mrs. Wilfer. Miss Lavinia laughed, a short laugh, as she muttered, "Yes, to be sure." "And I require my audacious child," persuaded Mrs. Wilfer with a withering look at her youngest, on whom it had not the slightest effect, "to please, to be just to her sister, Bella, to remember that her sister, Bella, is much sought after, and that when her sister, Bella, accept an intention, she considers herself to be conferring quite, as much honour." This was an indignant shiver, as she receives. "But here, Mrs. Bella repudiated, and said quietly, "I can speak for myself, you know, ma'am. You needn't bring me in, please." "And it's all very well aiming at others through convenient me," said the irrepressible Lavinia spitefully, "but I'd like to ask George Sampson, what he says to it." "Mr. Sampson," proclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, seeing that young gentleman take his stop out, and so darkly fixing him with her eyes, is that he put it in again. "Mr. Sampson, as a friend of this family, and a frequenter of this house, is I am persuaded far too well bred to interpose on such an invitation." This exaltation of the young gentleman moved the conscientious Mrs. Boffin to repentance, for having done him an injustice in her mind, and consequently to saying that she and Mr. Boffin were at any time be glad to see him, and attention were she handsomely acknowledged by replying with his stopper unremoved. "That's a ride to you, but I'll always engage day and night." However, Bella compensating for all drawbacks by responding to the advances of the Boffins in an engaging way, that easy pair were on the whole well-satisfied, and proposed to the said Bella that as soon as they should be in a condition to receive her in a manner suitable to their desires, Mrs. Boffin should return with notice of the fact. This arrangement, Mrs. Wilfer sanctioned with a stately inclination of her head and wave of her gloves, as who should say, "Your demerits shall be overlooked, and you shall be mercifully gratified, poor people." "By the by-mom," said Mr. Boffin, turning back as he was going, "you have a lodger." "A gentleman," Mrs. Wilfer answered, qualifying the lower expression, "undoubtedly occupies our first floor." "I may call him our mute old friend," said Mr. Boffin. "What sort of a fellow is our mute old friend now?" "Do you like him?" "Mr. Oaksmith is very punctual, very quiet, a very eligible inmate." "Because," Mr. Boffin explained, "you must know that our not particularly well acquainted with our mute old friend, for I have only seen him once." "You give a good account of him?" "Is you know?" "Mr. Oaksmith is at home," said Mrs. Wilfer, "indeed," pointing through the window. "There he stands at the garden-gate, waiting for you, perhaps." "Perhaps so," replied Mr. Boffin, "saw me come in, maybe." Bella had closely attended to this short dialogue, accompanying Mrs. Boffin to the gate. She has closely watched what followed. "How are you, sir? How are you?" said Mr. Boffin. "This is Mrs. Boffin. Mr. Oaksmith, I told you of my dear." She gave him good day, and he bestowed himself and helped her to her seat and the like with a ready hand. "Good-bye for the present, Mrs. Bella," said Mrs. Boffin, calling out a hearty parting, "we shall meet again soon, and then I hope I shall have my little John Harmon to show you." Mr. Oaksmith, who was at the wheel adjusting the skirts of her dress, suddenly looked behind him and around him, and then looked up at her with a face so pale that Mrs. Boffin cried, "Gracious!" and after a moment, "What's the matter, sir?" "How can you show her the dead?" returned Mr. Oaksmith. "It's only an adopted child, one I have told her of, one I'm going to give the name to." "You took me by for surprise," said Mr. Oaksmith, and it sounded like an omen that you should speak of showing the dead to one so young and blooming. Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr. Oaksmith admired her. Whether the knowledge for it was rather that than suspicion caused her to incline to him a little more, or a little less, and she had done at first. Whether it rendered her eager to find out more about him because she sought to establish reason for her distrust, or because she sought to free him from it, was as yet dark to her own heart. But at most times he occupied a great amount of her attention, and she had set her attention closely on this incident. That he knew it as well as she, she knew as well as he, when they were left together standing on the path by the garden gate. "Those are worthy people, Miss Wilfer." "Do you know them well?" asked Bella. He smiled, reproaching her, and she colored, reproaching herself, both with the knowledge that she had meant to entrap him into an answer, not true, when he said, "I know of them." "Truly, he told us he had seen you but once." "Truly, I supposed he did." Bella was nervous now, and would have been glad to recall her question. You thought it strange that feeling much interested in you, I should start at what sounded like a proposal to bring you into contact with the murdered man who lies in his grave. I might have known, of course, an amendment should have known, that he could not have that meaning, but my interest remains. Reentering the family room in a meditative state, Miss Bella was received by the irrepressible luvigner with... "There, Bella. At last I hope you've got your wishes realized by your boffins. You'll be rich enough now with your boffins. You can have as much flirting as you like at your boffins, but you won't take me to your boffins. I can tell you, you and your boffins, too." "If, quote Mr. George Sampson, moodily pulling your stopper out, Miss Bella's Mr. Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to me. I only wish him to understand this betwixt man and man, that he does it at his peril." And was going to say peril, but Miss Lavigner having no confidence in his mental powers, and feeling his oration to have no definite application to any circumstances, jerked his stopperine again for the sharpness that made his eyes water. And now the worthy Mrs. Wilfer, having used her youngest daughter as a lay figure for the edification of these boffins, became bland to her, and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of character which was still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the family with her remarkable powers as a physiognomist. Powers that terrified I.W. went ever let loose, as being always fraught with gloom and evil which no inferior prescience was aware of. And this Mrs. Wilfer now did, be it observed in jealousy of these boffins in the very same moments when she was already reflecting how she would flourish these very same boffins and the state they kept over the heads of her boffinless friends. "Of their manners?" said Mrs. Wilfer. "I say nothing. Of their appearance I say nothing. Of the disinterestedness of their intentions towards better I say nothing but the craft, the secrecy, the dark deep underhanded potting, written in Mrs. Boffin's countenance, make me shudder." As an incontrovertible proof at those baleful attributes were all there, Mrs. Wilfer shadowed on the spot. End of Book I, Chapter 9 Chapter 10 A Marriage Contract There is excitement in the veneering mansion. The mature young lady is going to be married, powder and all, to the mature young gentleman, and she is to be married from the veneering house, and the veneerings are to give the breakfast. The analytical, who objects as a matter of principle to everything that occurs on the premises, necessarily objects to the match, but his consent has been dispensed with, and a spring van is delivering its load of greenhouse plants at the door in order that tomorrow's feast may be crowned with flowers. The mature young lady is a lady of property. The mature young gentleman is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes in a condescending amateurish way into the city, attends meetings of directors, and has to do with traffic in shares. As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners, have shares. Have shares enough to be on boards of direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all. Shares. Oh, mighty shares. To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin as under the influence of henbane or opium, to cry out night and day, relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, bias and sell us, ruin us, only we beseechy take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us. While the lums and graces have been preparing this torch for Hyman, which is to be kindled tomorrow, Mr. Tremlow has suffered much in his mind. It would seem that both the mature young lady and the mature young gentlemen must indubitably be the nearing's oldest friends. Wards of his, perhaps. Yet that can scarcely be, for they are older than himself. Veneering has been in their confidence throughout, and has done much to lure them to the altar. He has mentioned to Tremlow how he said to Mrs. Veneering, and a stationer, this must be a match. He has mentioned to Tremlow how he regards Saphronia Akisham, the mature young lady, in the light of a sister, and Alfred Lamel, the mature young gentleman, in the light of a brother. Tremlow has asked him whether he went to school as a junior with Alfred. He has answered, not exactly, but the Saphronia was adopted by his mother. He has answered, not precisely so. Tremlow's hand has gone to his forehead with a lost air. But two or three weeks ago, Tremlow, sitting over his newspaper and over his dry toast and weak tea and over the stable yard in Duke Street St. James's, received a highly perfumed cocked hat and monogram from Mrs. Veneering, and treating her dearest Mr. T, if not particularly engaged that day, to come like a charming soul and make a fourth at dinner with dear Mr. Podsnap, for the discussion of an interesting family topic, the last three words doubly underlined and pointed with a note of admiration. And Tremlow, replying, "Not engaged and more than delighted, goes, and this takes place." "My dear Tremlow," says Veneering, "your ready response to Anastasia's unceremonious invitation is truly kind and like an old old friend. You know our dear friend Podsnap?" Tremlow ought to know the dear friend Podsnap, who covered him with so much confusion, and he says he does know him, and Podsnap reciprocates. Apparently, Podsnap has been so wrought upon in a short time as to believe that he has been intimate in the house many, many, many years. In the friendliest manner, he is making himself quite at home with his back to the fire, executing a satuette of the colossus at Rhodes. Tremlow, has before noticed in his feeble way, how soon the Veneering guests become infected with the Veneering fiction. Not however, that he has the least notion of its being his own case. "Our friends," Alfred and Saphronia, pursues Veneering the veiled prophet, "our friends, Alfred and Saphronia, you'll be glad to hear, my dear fellows, are going to be married. As my wife and I make it a family affair, the entire direction of which we take upon ourselves, of course our first step is to communicate the fact to our family friends." "Oh," thinks Tremlow, with his eyes on Podsnap, "then there are only two of us, and he's the other." "I did hope," Veneering goes on, "to have had Lady Tippins to meet you, but she is always in request and is unfortunately engaged." "Oh," thinks Tremlow, with his eyes wandering, "then there are three of us, and she's the other." "Mautama Lightwood," resumes Veneering, "whom you both know is out of town, but he writes in his whimsical manner that as we ask him to be bridegroom's best man when the ceremony takes place, he will not refuse, though he doesn't see what he has to do with it." "Oh," thinks Tremlow, with his eyes rolling, "then there are four of us, and he's the other." "Bots and Brewer," observe Veneering, "whom you also know. I have not asked today, but I reserve them for the occasion." "Then," thinks Tremlow, with his eyes shut, "there are six, but here collapses, and does not completely recover until dinner is over, and the analytical has been requested to withdraw." "We now come," says Veneering, "to the point. The real point of our little family consultation. Saphronia, having lost both father and mother, has no one to give it away." "Give it away yourself," says Potsnap. "My dear Potsnap, no. For three reasons. Firstly, because I couldn't take so much upon myself when I have respected family friends to remember, secondly, because I'm not so vain as to think that I look the part. Thirdly, because Anastasia is a little superstitious on the subject and feels, versed to my giving away anybody, until baby is old enough to be married." "What would happen if I did?" Potsnap inquires of Mrs. Veneering. "My dear Mr. Potsnap, it's very foolish I know, but I have an instinctive presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else first, he would never give away baby." Thus Mrs. Veneering, with her open hands pressed together, and each of her eight aquiline fingers looking so very like her one aquiline, knows that the brand new jewels on them seem necessary for distinction's sake. "But, my dear Potsnap," quotes Veneering, "there is a tried friend of our family who I think and hope you will agree with me, Potsnap, is the friend on whom this agreeable duty almost naturally devolves." "That friend," saying the words, is that the company were about 150 in number, "is now among us. That friend is Twemlow." "Certainly," from Potsnap. "That friend," Veneering repeats with greater firmness, "is our dear good, Twemlow. And I cannot sufficiently express to you, my dear Potsnap, the pleasure I feel in having this opinion of mine and Anastasia so readily confirmed by you that other equally familiar and tried friend who stands in the proud position—I mean, who proudly stands in the position—or I ought rather to say, who places Anastasia and myself in the proud position of himself standing in the simple position of baby's godfather." And indeed, Veneering is much relieved in mind to find that Potsnap, which raised no jealousy, of Twemlow's elevation. So it has come to pass that the spring van is screwing flowers on the rosy hours and on the staircase, and that Twemlow is surveying the ground in which he is to play his distinguished part tomorrow. He has already been to the church and taken note of the various impediments in the aisle, under the auspices of an extremely dreary widow who opens the pews, and whose left hand appears to be in a state of acute rheumatism, but is in fact voluntarily doubled up to act as a money-box. And now Veneering shoots out of the study wherein he is accustomed, one contemplative, to give his mind to the carving and gilding of the pilgrims going to Canterbury. In order to show Twemlow the little flourish he has prepared for the trumpets of fashion, describing how that on the seventeenth instant at St. James's Church, the Reverend Blank Blank, assisted by the Reverend Dash Dash, united in the bonds of matrimony, Alfred Lemmel Esquire of Sackville Street Piccadilly to Saphronia, only daughter of the later ratio Acushum Esquire of Yorkshire. Also how the fair bride was married from the house of Hamilton veneering Esquire of Staconia, and was given away by Melvin Twemlow Esquire of Duke Street St. James's, second cousin to Lord Snigsworth of Snigsworthy Park. While perusing which composition Twemlow makes some opaque approach to perceiving that if the Reverend Blank Blank and the Reverend Dash Dash fail, after this introduction to become enrolled in the list of Veneering's dearest and oldest friends, they will have none but themselves to thank for it. After which appears Saphronia, whom Twemlow has seen twice in his lifetime, to thank Twemlow for counterfeiting the later ratio Acushum Esquire broadly of Yorkshire, and after her appears Alfred, whom Twemlow has seen once in his lifetime, to do the same, and to make a pasty sort of blitter, as if he were constructed for candlelight only, and had been let out at a daylight by some grand mistake. And after that comes Mrs. Veneering in a pervadingly aquilined satyr figure, and with transparent little knobs on her temple, like the little transparent knobs on the bridge of her nose, worn out by worry and excitement, as she tells her dear Mr. Twemlow, and reluctantly revived with cura-coa by the analytical. And after that the bridesmaids begin to come by railroad from various parts of the country, and to come like adorable recruits are listed by a sergeant not present, for on arriving at the Veneering depot they are in a barrack of strangers. So Twemlow goes home to Duke Streets in James's to take a plate of mutton broth with a chop in it, and look at the marriage service, in order that he may cut in at the right place tomorrow, and he is low, and feels it dull over the livery stable yard, and is distinctly aware of a dint in his heart made by the most adorable of the adorable bridesmaids. For the poor little harmless gentleman once had his fancy, like the rest of us, and she didn't answer, as she often does not, and he thinks the adorable bridesmaid is like the fancy as she was then, which she is not at all, and that if the fancy had not married someone else for money but had married him for love, he and she would have been happy, which they wouldn't have been, and that she has a tenderness for him still, whereas her toughness is a proverb. Brooding over the fire with his dry little head in his dry little hems, and his dry little elbows and his dry little knees, Twemlow is melancholy. "No adorable to bear me company here," thinks he, "no adorable at the club." "A waste-o waste-o waste, my Twemlow," and so drops asleep, and has galvanic starts all over him. Be times next morning that horrible old lady tippins, relict of the late Sir Thomas tippins, knighted in mistake for somebody else by his majesty King George III, who, while performing the ceremony, was graciously pleased to observe, what, what, what, who, who, who, why, why, begins to be died and varnished for the interesting occasion. She has a reputation for giving smart accounts of things, and she must be at these people's early, my dear, to lose nothing of the fun. Whereabout in the Bonnet and drapery announced by her name, any fragment of the real woman may be concealed is perhaps known to her maid, but you could easily buy all you see of her in Bonn Street, or you might scalp her and peel her and scrape her, and make two lady tippinses out of her, and yet not penetrate to the genuine article. She has a large gold-eyed lass, has lady tippins, to survey the proceedings with. If she had one in each eye, it might keep that other drooping lid up, and look more uniform. But perennial youth is in her artificial flowers, and a list of lovers is full. "Mautama, are you rich?" says Lady Tippins, turning the eyeglass about and about. "Where is your charge, the bridegroom?" "Give you, my honor," returns Mortimer. "I don't know, and I don't care." "Miserable! Is that the way you do your duty?" Beyond an impression that he has to sit upon my knee and be seconded at some point of the solemnities like a principle at a prize fight, I assure you I have no notion what my duty is," returns Mortimer. Eugene is also in attendance, with a pervading air upon him of having presupposed the ceremony to be a funeral, and of being disappointed. The scene of the vestry room of St. James's Church, with a number of leathery old registers on shelves that might be bound in Lady Tippins's. But Hark, a carriage at the gate, and Mortimer's man arrives, looking rather like a spurious Mephistopheles, and an unacknowledged member of that gentleman's family, whom Lady Tippins surveying through her eyeglass considers a fine man, and quite a catch, and of whom Mortimer remarks in the lowest spirits as he approaches. "I believe this is my fellow," confound him, "more carriages at the gate, and loathe the rest of the characters, whom Lady Tippins standing on a cushion surveying through the eyeglass thus checks off." "Bride, a five and forty of a day, thirty shillings a yard, veil fifteen pound, pocket hinkety for present. Bridesmaids, kept down for fear about shining bride, consequently not girls, twelve and six months a yard; veneering's flowers, snubnosed one rather pretty, but too conscious of her stockings, bonnets, three pound ten." "Twillow, blessed release for the dear man, if she really was his daughter, nervous even under the pretense that she is." Well, he may be. "Mrs. Veneering, never saw such velvet, say, two thousand pounds as she stands, absolute jeweler's window, father must have been a pawnbroker, or how could these people do it?" "Attend and unknowns, pokey." Ceremony performed, register signed, Lady Tippins escorted out of sacred edifice by veneering, carriages rolling back to stickonia, servants with favors and flowers, veneering's house reached, drawing rooms most magnificent. Here the pod-snaps await the happy party. Mr. Pod-snap with his hair brushes made the most of, that imperial rocking horse, Mrs. Pod-snap, majestically skittish, hereto our boots and brewer, and the two other buffers. Each buffer, with a flower in his buttonhole, his hair curled and his gloves buttoned on tight, apparently come prepared, if anything had happened to the bridegroom, to be married instantly. Hereto the bride's aunt, a next relation, a widowed female of a minuser sort, in a stony cap, glaring petrifaction at her fellow creatures, hereto the bride's trusty, an oil-cake-fed style of business gentleman, with moony spectacles and an object of much interest. Veneering launching himself upon this trusty as his oldest friend, which makes seven to him no thought, and confidentially retiring with him into the conservatory, it is understood that veneering is his co-trusty, and that they are arranging about the fortune. Buffers are even overheard to whisper thirty thousand pounds, with a smack and a relish suggestive of the very finest oysters. Pokey unknowns, amazed to find how intimately they know veneering, pluck up spirit, fold their arms, and begin to contradict him before breakfast. What time Mrs. Veneering, carrying baby dressed as a bridesmaid, flits about among the company, emitting flashes of many coloured lightning from diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. The analytical, in course of time, achieving what he feels to be due to himself, and bringing to a dignified conclusion several quarrels he has on hand with the pastry-cooks men, announces breakfast. Dining-room no less magnificent than drawing-room, tables superb, all the camels out and all laden. Splendid cake covered with cupids, silver, and true-levers knots. Splendid bracelet, produced by veneering before going down, clasped upon the arm of bride. Yet nobody seems to think much more of the veneerings than if they were a tolerable land-lord and land-lady doing the thing in the way of business at so much ahead. The bride and bride-room talk and laugh apart, as has always been their manner. And the buffers work their way through the dishes, with systematic perseverance, as has always been their manner. And the pokey unknowns are exceedingly benevolent to one another in invitations to take glasses of champagne. But Mrs. Podsnap, arching her mane and rocking her grandest, has a far more deferential audience than Mrs. Veneering, and Podsnap all but does the honors. Another dismal circumstance is that Veneering, having the captivating tippens on one side of him, and the bride's aunt on the other, finds it immensely difficult to keep the peace. For Medusa, besides unmistakingly glaring petrifaction at the fascinating tippens, follows every lively remark made by that dear creature with an audible snort, which may be referable to a chronic cold in the head that may also be referable to indignation and contempt. And this snort being regular in its reproduction at length comes to be expected by the company who make embarrassing pauses when it is falling due, and by waiting for it, render it more emphatic when it comes. The stony aunt has likewise an injurious way of rejecting all dishes where of lady tippens far takes, saying aloud when they are proffered to her, "No, no, no, not for me, take it away." As with the set purpose of implying a misgiving that if nourished upon similar meats she might come to be like that charmer, which would be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, lady tippens tries a youthful Sally or two, and tries the eyeglass, but from the impenetrable cap and snorting armor of the stony aunt, all weapons rebound powerless. Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns support each other in being unimpressable. They persist in not being frightened by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together to defy the elaborately chased ice pails. They even seem to unite in some vague utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady will make a pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry themselves like customers. Nor is their compensating influence in the adorable bridesmaids, for having very little interest in the bride, and none at all in one another, those lovely beings become each one of her own account depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery present. While the bridegroom's man exhausted in the back of his chair appears to be improving the occasion by penitentially contemplating all the wrong he has ever done. The difference between him and his friend Eugene, being, at the latter and the back of his chair, appears to be contemplating all the wrong he would like to do, particularly to the present company. In which state of affairs the usual ceremony is rather droop and flag, and the splendid cake, when cut by the fair hand of the bride, has but an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indispensable to be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be done are done, including lady tippens' yawning, falling asleep, and waking insensible. And there is hurried preparation for the nuptial journey to the isle of white, and the outer air teems of brass bands and spectators. In full sight of whom the malignant star of the analytical has preordained at pain and ridicule shall befall him. For he, standing on the door's depth to grace the departure, is suddenly caught a most prodigious thump on the side of his head with a heavy shoe, which a buffer in the hall, champagne flushed and wild of aim, has borrowed on the spur of the moment from the pastry-cooks porter to cast after the departing pair as an auspicious omen. So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms, all of them flushed with breakfast, as having taken the scallatina sociably, and there the combined unknowns do malignant things with their legs to ottomens, and take as much as possible out of the splendid furniture. So lady tippens quite undetermined whether today is the day before yesterday, or the day after tomorrow, or the week after next, fades away, and Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene fade away, and Tremlow fades away, and the stony aunt goes away, she declines to fade, proving rock to the last, and even the unknowns are slowly strained off, and it is all over. All over, that is to say, for the time being. But there is another time to come, and it comes in about a fortnight, and it comes to Mr. and Mrs. Lemmel on the sands at Shanklin in the Isle of White. Mr. and Mrs. Lemmel have walked for some time on the Shanklin sands, and one may see by their footprints that they have not walked down in arm, and that they have not walked in a straight track, and that they have walked in a moody humour; for the lady has prodded little spurting holes in the damp sand before her with her parasol, and the gentleman has trailed his stick after him, as if he were of the Mephistopheles family indeed, and had walked with a drooping tail. "Do you mean to tell me then, Saphronia?" Thus he begins after long silence when Saphronia flashes fiercely and turns upon him. "Don't put it upon me, sir. I ask, do you mean to tell me?" Mr. Lemmel falls silent again, and they walk as before. Mrs. Lemmel opens her nostrils and bites her under lip. Mr. Lemmel takes his gingerous whiskers in his left hand, and, bringing them together, frowns furtively, at his beloved, out of a thick, gingerous bush. "Do I mean to say?" Mrs. Lemmel, after a time repeats with indignation, putting it on me, "They hunt menly disingenuousness." Mr. Lemmel stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. "The what?" Mrs. Lemmel hortily replies, without stopping and without looking back, "The meanness." He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts. "That is not what you said. You said disingenuousness." "What if I did?" "There is no if, in the case, you did. I did, then. And what of it?" "What of it?" said Mr. Lemmel. "Have you the face to utter the word to me?" "The face to—" replied Mrs. Lemmel, staring at him with cold scorn. "Pray! How dare you, sir, utter the word to me?" I never did. As this happens to be true, Mrs. Lemmel is thrown on the feminine resource of saying, "I don't care what you uttered or did not utter." After a little more walking, and a little more silence, Mr. Lemmel breaks the latter. "You shall proceed in your own way," he claim a right to ask me. "Do I mean to tell you?" "Do I mean to tell you what?" "That you are a man of property?" "No." "Then you married me on false pretenses?" "So be it. Next comes what you mean to say." "Do you mean to say what a woman of property?" "No." "Then you married me on false pretenses." "If you were so dull, fortune hunter, that you deceived yourself, or if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over willing to be deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?" The lady demands with great disparity. I asked Veneering, and he told me you were rich. "Veneering!" was great content, and what does Veneering know about me? "Was he not your trustee?" "No. I have no trustee, but the one you saw on the day when you fraudulently married me, and his trust is not a very difficult one, who it is only an annuity of 115 pounds. I think there are some odd shillings or pence of your very particular." Mr. Lemmel bestows a by no means loving look upon the partner of his joys and sorrows, and he matters something but checks himself. "Question for question. It is my turn again, Mrs. Lemmel. What made you, suppose me, a man of property?" "You made me suppose you so? Perhaps you will deny that. You always presented yourself to me in that character." "But you asked somebody, too. Can Mrs. Lemmel admission for admission? You asked somebody?" "I asked Veneering, and Veneering knew as much of me as in you of you, or as anybody knows of him. After more silent walking the bride stopped short to say in a passionate manner, "I will never forgive the Veneering's for this. Neither will I," returns the bridegroom. "With that they walk again. She, making those angry spurts in the sand, he dragging that dejected tail. The tide is low, and seems to have thrown them together high on the bear shore. A gull comes swooping by their heads and floats them. There was a golden surface on the brown cliffs, but now, and behold, they are only damp earth. A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the far-out rollers mount upon one another, to look at the entrapped imposters, and to join and impish an exultant gambles. "Do you pretend to believe," Mrs. Lemmel resumes sternly, "when you talk of my marrying over worldly advantages, that it was within the bounds of reasonable probability that I would have married you for yourself?" "Again, there are two sides, so the question, Mrs. Lemmel. What do you pretend to believe?" "So, you first deceived me, and then insult me," cries the lady with a heaving bosom, "not at all. I've originated nothing. The double-edged question was yours." "Was mine," the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her angry hand. His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have come to light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself had, within the last few moments, touched it here and there. But he has repressive power, and she has none. "Throw it away," he coolly recommends, as to the parasol, "you have made it useless. You look ridiculous with it." Whereupon she calls him in her rage, "at a separate villain!" And so casts the broken thing from her, as that it strikes him in falling. The finger marks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks on at her side. She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most deceived, the worst used of women. Then she says that if she had the courage to kill herself, she would do it. Then she calls him vile imposter. Then she asks him why in the disappointment of his base speculation he does not take her life with his own hand under the present favourable circumstances. Then she cries again. Then she is enraged again, and makes some mention of swindlers. Finally she sits down crying on a block of stone, and is in all the known and unknown humours of her sex at once. Pending her changes, those of four said marks in his face have come and gone. Now here, now there, like white steps of a pipe on which the diabolical performer has played a tune. Also his livid lips are parted at last, as if he were breathless as running, yet he is not. Now, get up, Mrs. Lamel, and let us speak reasonably. He sits upon her stone, and takes no heed of him. Get up, I tell you. Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and repeats, "You tell me, tell me, for sooth." She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her, as she droops her head again, but her whole figure reveals that she knows it uneasily. "Enough of this. Come, you hear? Get up." Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again. But this time, with their faces turned towards their place of residence. Mrs. Lamel, we have both been deceiving, and we have both been deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten, in a nutshell there is the state of the case. "You sought me out." "Let us have done with that. We know very well how it was. Why should you and I talk about it, when you and I can't disguise it?" To proceed. I'm disappointed, and cut a poor figure. "Am I no one?" Someone, and I was coming to you if you had waited a moment. "You too," are disappointed, and cut a poor figure. "I'm injured, figure." "You are now cool enough, Saphronia, to see that you can't be injured without my being equally injured, and therefore, the mere word is not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such a fool as to take you to such great an extent upon trust. And when I look back, the bride cries, interrupting, and when you look back, you wonder how you're going to have been, he'll excuse the word. Most certainly, with so much reason, such a fool is to take me to so great an extent upon trust. But the folly is committed on both sides. I cannot get rid of you, you cannot get rid of me. What follows?" "Shame misery," the bride bitterly replies. "I don't know. I'm mutual understanding follows, and I think it may carry us through. Here I split my discourse. Give me your arms, Saphronia." Into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer. Firstly, it's enough to have been done without the mortification of being known to have been done, so we agree to keep the fact to ourselves. "You agree? If it is possible, I do. Possible. We have pretended well enough to one another. Can't we are united, pretend to the world?" Agreed. Secondly, we owe the veneerings a grudge, and we owe all of our people the grudge of wishing them to be taken in as we ourselves have been taken in. Agreed?" "Yes," agreed. "We come smoothly, to thirdly." "You have called me an adventurer, Saphronia." "So I am, in plain, uncomplementary English. So I am. So are you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to keep our own secret and to work together in furtherance of our own schemes." "What schemes?" "Any scheme that will bring us money, by our own schemes, I mean our joint interest." Agreed. She answers, after little hesitation. "I, suppose so," agreed. "Carry did once, you see?" "No," Saphronia. "Only half a dozen words more. We know one another perfectly. Don't be tempted into twitting me with the past knowledge that you have of me, because it is identical to the past knowledge that I have of you. And in twitting me, you twitch yourself, and I don't want to hear you do it." With this good understanding established between us, it is better never done. To wind up all, you have shown temper today, Saphronia. Don't be betrayed into doing so again, because I have a devil of a temper myself. So the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract, thus signed, sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If, when those infernal fingermarks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred Lammel, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of subduing his dear wife, Mrs. Alfred Lammel, by it once divesting her of any lingering reality or pretense of self-respect, the purpose would seem to have been presently executed. The mature young lady has mighty little need of powder now for her downcast face as she escorts her in the light of the setting sun to their abode of bliss. End of Book I Chapter 10 Chapter 11 POD SNAPPERY Mr. POD SNAP was well to do, and stood very high in Mr. POD SNAP's opinion. Beginning with the good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had driven exceedingly in the marine insurance way, and was quite satisfied. He never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well-satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself. Thus, happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr. POD SNAP settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence. There was a dignified conclusiveness, not to add a grand convenience, in this way of getting rid of disagreeables, which had done much towards establishing Mr. POD SNAP in his lofty place in Mr. POD SNAP's satisfaction. "I don't want to know about it. I don't choose to discuss it. I don't admit it." Mr. POD SNAP had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm, in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems by swooping them behind him, and, consequently, sheer away, that those words and the flushed face, for they affronted him. Mr. POD SNAP's world was not a very large world, morally. No, not even geographically, seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce without the countries, he considered other countries with that important reservation a mistake, and how their manners and customs would conclusively observe, not English. When presto, with the flourish of the arm and a flush of the face, they were swept away. Elsewhere the world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter past, breakfasted at nine, went to the city at ten, came home at half past five, and dined at seven. Mr. POD SNAP's notions of the arts and their integrity might have been stated thus. Literature, large print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving closer to quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the city at ten, coming home at half past five, and dining at seven. Painting and sculpture, models and portraits, representing professors of getting up at eight, shaving closer to quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the city at ten, coming home at half past five, and dining at seven. Music, a respectable performance, without variations, on stringed and wind instruments, is a dately expressive of getting up at eight, shaving closer to quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the city at ten, coming home at half past five, and dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the arts on pain of ex communication, nothing else to be anywhere. As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. POD SNAP was sensible of its being required of him to take providence under his protection. Consequently, he always knew exactly what providence meant. Inferior and less respectable men might fall short of that mark, but Mr. POD SNAP was always up to it, and it was very remarkable, must have been very comfortable, that what providence meant was invariably what Mr. POD SNAP meant. These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school, which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling after its representative man, POD SNAPery. They were confined within close bounds, as Mr. POD SNAP's own head was confined by his shirt colour, and they were enunciated with a sounding pump that smacked of the creaking of Mr. POD SNAP's own boots. There was a Miss POD SNAP, and this young rocking horse was being trained in her mother's art of prancing in a stately manner, without ever getting on. But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an undersized damsel with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows and a rasped surface of nose who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother's headdress and her father from head to foot, crushed by the mere deadweight of POD SNAPery. A certain institution in Mr. POD SNAP's mind, which he called "the young person", may be considered to have been embodied in Miss POD SNAP his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was that, according to Mr. POD SNAP, she seemed always liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young person's excessive innocence and another person's guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr. POD SNAP's word for it, and the soberous tints of drab, white, lilac and grey were all flaming red to this troublesome bull of a young person. The POD SNAPs lived in a shady angle adjoining Portland Square. They were a kind of people certain did well in the shade. Wherever they dwelt. Miss POD SNAP's life had been from her first appearance on this planet altogether of a shady order. For Mr. POD SNAP's young person was likely to get little good out of association with other young persons, and had therefore been restricted to companionship without very congenial older persons, and with massive furniture. Miss POD SNAP's early views of life being principally derived from the reflection of it in her father's boots, and in the wall-napped and rosewood tables of the dim drawing rooms, and in their swarthy giants of looking-glasses, were of a somber cast. And it was not wonderful that now, when she was on most days, solemnly tooled through the park by the side of her mother, and a great tall, custard-coloured faiton, she showed above the apron of that vehicle like a dejected young person sitting up in bed to take a startled look at things in general, and very strongly desiring to get her head under the counter-plane again. Said Mr. POD SNAP to Mrs. POD SNAP. "Jordiana is almost eighteen," said Mrs. POD SNAP to Mr. POD SNAP dissenting. "All missed eighteen," said Mr. POD SNAP, then to Mrs. POD SNAP. "Really? I think we should have some people on Georgiana's birthday," said Mrs. POD SNAP, then to Mr. POD SNAP, which will enable us to clear off all those people who are due. So it came to pass that Mr. Mrs. POD SNAP requested the honour of the company of seventeen friends of their souls at dinner, and that they substituted other friends of their souls for such of the seventeen original friends of their souls as deeply regretted that a prior engagement prevented their having the honour of dining with Mr. Mrs. POD SNAP in pursuance of their kind invitation, and that Mrs. POD SNAP said of all these inconsolable personages as she checked them off with a pencil in her list, asked for any rate and got rid of, and that they successfully disposed of the good many friends of their souls in this way, and felt their conscience as much lightened. There were still other friends of their souls who were not entitled to be asked to dinner, but had a claim to be invited to come and take a hunch of mutton, vapour bath, at half-plus nine. For the clearing off of these were these, Mrs. POD SNAP added a small and early evening to the dinner and looked in at the music shop to bespeak a well-conducted automaton to come and play quidrills for a carpet dance. Mr. Mrs. Veneering and Mr. Mrs. Veneering's brand-new bride and bride room were of the dinner company, but the POD SNAP establishment had nothing else in common with the Veneering's. Mr. POD SNAP could tolerate taste in a mushroom man who stood in need of that sort of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the POD SNAP plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully, here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only led, but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce, wouldn't you like to melt me down? A corporate straddling Ipern, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address with an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-sellers. All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel day eight. The majority of the guests were like the plate and included several heavy articles weighing ever so much, but there was a foreign gentleman among them whom Mr. POD SNAP had indicted after much debate with himself, believing the whole European continent to be immortal alliance against the young person, and there was a droll disposition not only on the part of Mr. POD SNAP but of everybody else to treat him as if he were a child who was hard of hearing. As a delicate concession to this unfortunately-born foreigner, Mr. POD SNAP in receiving him had presented his wife as "Madame" POD SNAP, also his daughter as Mademoiselle POD SNAP, with some inclination to add "Marfi" in which both venture however he checked himself. The Veneerings, being at that time the only other arrivals he had added and a condescendingly explanatory manner, Monsieur Veneer Ring, and had then subsided into English. "How do you like London?" Mr. POD SNAP now inquired from his station of host, as if he were administering something in the nature of a powder or potion to the deaf child. "London?" "London?" "London?" The foreign gentleman admired it. "You find it very large," said Mr. POD SNAP spatiously. The foreign gentleman found it very large. "And very rich," the foreign gentleman found it without doubt and normal reach. "Inormously rich," we say, pretend Mr. POD SNAP and a condescending manner. Our English adverbs do not terminate in "Mong" and we pronounce the "ch" as if they were at before it. We say "rich," "reach," remarked the foreign gentleman. "And do you find, sir," pursued Mr. POD SNAP with dignity, "many evidences that strike you of our British constitution in the streets of the world's metropolis. London?" "London?" "London?" The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not altogether understand. "The Constitution Britannique," Mr. POD SNAP explained as if he were teaching in an infant school, "we say British, but you say Britannique, you know, forgiveingly as if that were not his fault. The Constitution, sir." The foreign gentleman said, "Mays, yeas, I know him!" A youngish, Salawish gentleman in spectacles, with a lumpy forehead, seated in a supplementary chair to corner of the table, here caused a profound sensation by saying in a raised voice, "Esca!" and then stopping dead. "May we," said the foreign gentleman turning towards him, "Esca!" "Quadong?" But the gentleman with the lumpy forehead, having for the time, delivered himself of all that he found behind his lumps, speak for the time no more. "I was inquiring," said Mr. POD SNAP, assuming the threat of his discourse, "whether you have observed in our streets, as we should say, upon our heavy, as you would say, any tokens?" The foreign gentleman with patient courtesy, and treated pardon. "But what was tokens?" "Mocks," said Mr. POD SNAP, "signs, you know, appearances, traces." "Ah, of our horse!" inquired the foreign gentleman. "We call it horse," said Mr. POD SNAP, with forbearance. "In England, Angolateri, England, we aspirate the H, and we say horse. Only our lower classes say horse." "Padong?" said the foreign gentleman. "I am always wrong." "Our language," said Mr. POD SNAP, "for the gracious consciousness of being always right, is difficult. Our words is our copious language, and trying two strangers. I will not pursue my question." But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again, madly, said, "Esca!" And again, spake no more. "It merely referred," Mr. POD SNAP explained with a sense of meritorious proprietorship, "to our Constitution, sir. We, Englishmen, are very proud of our Constitution, sir. It was bestowed upon us by providence. No other country is so favored as this country. And, as are countries," the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr. POD SNAP put him right again, "we do not say as-a, we say-a-va, the letters-r-t, and-h. You say-tay and-h, you know, still, with clemency. The sound is the-the-the, and of the countries," said the foreign gentleman, "they do how? They do, sir," returned Mr. POD SNAP, gravely shaking his head, "they do-I'm sorry to be obliged to say it, as they do." "It was a little particular of providence," said the foreign gentleman, laughing, "for the frontier is not large." "Undoubtedly," said Mr. POD SNAP, "but so it is. It was the charter of the land. This island was best, sir, to the direct exclusion of such other countries as-as there may happen to be. And if we were all Englishmen present, I would say," added Mr. POD SNAP, looking round upon his compatriots and sounding solemnly with his theme, "that there is, in the Englishman, a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything calculated to call a blush into the cheeks of a young person which one would seek in vain among the nations of the earth." Having delivered this little summary, Mr. POD SNAP's face flushed as he thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by any prejudiced citizen of any other country, and with his favourite right-arm flourish he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia, Africa, and America nowhere. The audience were much edified by this passage of words, and Mr. POD SNAP, feeling that he was in rather remarkable force today, became smiling and conversational. "Has anything more been heard veneering," he inquired, "of the lucky legety? Nothing more," returned veneering, "than that he has come into possession of the property. I am told people now call him the golden dustman. I mentioned to you some time ago I think that the young lady whose intended husband was murdered is daughter to a clock of mine." "Yes, and it told me that," said POD SNAP, "and by the way I wish you would tell it again here, for it is a curious coincidence. Curious that the first news of the discovery should have been brought straight to your table when I was there, and curious that one of your people should have been so nearly interested in it. Just relate that, will you?" Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered exceedingly upon the harm and murder, and had turned the social distinction it conferred upon him to the account of making several dozen of brand-new, bosom friends. Indeed, such another lucky hit would almost have set him up in that way to his satisfaction. So, addressing himself to the most desirable of his neighbours, while Mrs. Veneering secured the next most desirable, he plunged into the case and emerged from it twenty minutes afterwards with the bank director in his arms. In the meantime Mrs. Veneering had dived into the same waters for a wealthy shipbroker and had brought him up safe and sound by the hair. Then Mrs. Veneering had to relate to a larger circle how she had been to see the girl and how she was really pretty and, considering her station, presentable. And this she did with such a successful display of her eight aquiline fingers and their encircling jewels that she happily laid hold of a drifting general officer, his wife and daughter, and not only restored their animation, which had become suspended, but made them lively friends within an hour. Although Mr. Podsnap would, in a general way, have highly disapproved of bodies and rivers, as ineligible topics with reference to the cheek of the young person, he had, as one may say, a share in this affair which made him a part proprietor. As its returns were immediate too, and the way of restraining the company from speechless contemplation of the wine-coolers, it paid, and he was satisfied. And now the hunch of mutton-faper bath, having received a gamey infusion, and a few last touches of sweets and coffee was quite ready, and the bathers came. But not before the street-automaton had got behind the bars of the piano music desk, and there presented the appearance of a captive languishing in a rosewood jail. And who now, so pleasant, or so well assorted as by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lemmel, he all sparkle, she all gracious contentment, both educational intervals exchanging looks like partners at cards, who played a game against all England. There was not much youth among the bathers, but there was no youth, the young person always accepted, in the articles of Podsnapery. Bold bathers folded their arms and talked to Mr. Podsnap on the hearth-rag, sneak whisked bathers with hats in their hands, lunged at Mrs. Podsnap and retreated. Prowling bathers went about looking into ornamental boxes and bowls, as if they had suspicions of larceny on the part of the Podsnaps, and expected to find something they had lost at the bottom. Bathers of the gentler sex sat silently comparing ivory shoulders. All this time, and always, poor little Miss Podsnap, whose tiny efforts, if she had made any, were swallowed up in the magnificence of her mother's rocking, kept herself as much out of sight and mind as she could, and appeared to be counting on many dismal returns of the day. It was somehow understood, as a secret article in the state proprieties of Podsnapery, that nothing must be said about the day. Consequently, this young damsel's nativity was hushed up and looked over, as if it were agreed on all hands, that it would have been better, that she had never been born. The Lamels were so fond of the dear veneerings, that they could not for some time detach themselves from those excellent trends. But at length, either a very open smile on Mr. Lamels' part, or a very secret elevation of one of his gingerous eyebrows, certainly the one or the other, seemed to say to Mrs. Lamel, "Why don't you play?" and so, looking about her, she saw Miss Podsnap, and seeming to say responsibly that card, and to be answered, "Yes," went and sat beside Miss Podsnap. Mrs. Lamel was overjoyed to escape into a corner for a little quiet talk. It promised to be a very quiet talk. Mrs. Podsnap replied in a flutter, "Oh, indeed, it's very kind of you, but I'm afraid I don't talk." "Let us make a beginning," said the insinuating Mrs. Lamel with her best smile, "Oh, I'm afraid you'll find me very dull, but my talks." That was plainly to be seen, for my was talking then at her usual counter with arched head and mane, opened eyes and nostrils. "Fond of reading, perhaps?" "Yes, at least I don't mind that so much," returned Miss Podsnap. "Mmm, music." So insinuating with Mrs. Lamel that she got half a dozen M's into the word before she got it out. "I haven't enough to play, even if I could. Ma plays." At exactly the same counter, with a certain flourishing appearance of doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock upon the instrument. "Of course, you like dancing." "Oh, no, I don't," said Miss Podsnap. "No. With your use and attractions, truly my dear, you surprise me." "I can't see," observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably and stealing several timid looks at Mrs. Lamel's carefully arranged face. "How I might have liked it, if I had been a—you won't mention it. Will you?" "My dear, never. No, I'm sure you won't. I can't say then how I should have liked it, if I had been a chimney sweep on Mayday." "Greecious," was the exclamation which amazement elicited from Mrs. Lamel. "There! I knew you'd wonder, but you won't mention it, will you?" "Upon my word, my love," said Mrs. Lamel. "You make me ten times more desirous now I talk to you, to know you well than I was when I sat over yonder-looking at you. How I wish we could be real friends. Try me as a real friend. Come, don't fancy me a frumpy old married woman, my dear. I was married by the other day, you know. I am dressed as a bride now, you see?" "About the chimney-sweeps." "Hush, Marlle here!" "She can't hear from where she sits." "Don't you be too sure of that?" said Mrs. Potsnap in a lower voice. "Well, what I mean is that they seem to enjoy it." "And that, perhaps, you would have enjoyed it, if you had been one of them?" Mrs. Potsnap nodded significantly. "Then you don't enjoy it now." "How is it possible?" said Mrs. Potsnap, "Oh, it is such a dreadful thing. If I was wicked enough and strong enough to kill anybody, it should be my partner." This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as socially practiced, that Mrs. Lamel looked at her young friend in some astonishment. Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her fingers in an opinioned attitude, as if you were trying to hide her elbows. But this latter utopian object, in short sleeves, always appeared to be the great inoffensive aim of her existence. "It sounds horrid, don't it?" said Mrs. Potsnap with a penitential face. Mrs. Lamel, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved herself into a look of smiling encouragement. "But it is, and it always has been," pursued Mrs. Potsnap, "such a trial to me. I so dread being awful. And it is so awful, no one knows what I suffered of Madame Sartusses, where I looked to dance and make presentation curtsies and other dreadful things, or at least where they tried to teach me. Mark can do it." "At any rate, my love," said Mrs. Lamel soothingly, "that's over." "Yes, it's over," returned Mrs. Potsnap, "but there's nothing gained by that. It's worse here than at Madame Sartusses. Ma was there, and Ma was here. But Pa wasn't there, and the company wasn't there, and they were not real partners. Oh, there's Ma speaking to the man at the piano. Oh, there's Ma going up to somebody. Oh, I know she's going to bring him to me. Oh, please, don't, please, don't, please, don't. Oh, keep away, keep away, keep away." These pious ejaculations Mrs. Potsnap uttered with her eyes closed and her head leaning back against the wall. "But the ogre advanced under the pilotage of Ma, and Ma said, 'Georgeiana,' Mr. Grampus, and the ogre clutched his victim and bore her off to his castle in the top couple. Then the discrete automaton, who had surveyed his ground, played a blossomless, tuneless set, and sixteen disciples of Potsnapery went through the figures of one, getting up at eight and shaving closer to quarter past, two, breakfasting at nine, three, going to the city of ten, four, coming home at half-plus five, five, dining at seven, and the grand chain. While these solemnities were in progress, Mr. Alfred Lamel, most loving of husbands, approached the chair of Mrs. Alfred Lamel, most loving of wives, and bending over the back of it trifle for some few seconds with Mrs. Lamel's bracelet. Slightly in contrast with this brief, airy towing, one might have noticed a certain dark attention in Mrs. Lamel's face, as she said some words with her eyes on Mr. Lamel's waistcoat and seemed in return to receive some lesson, but it was all done as a breath passes from a mirror. And now the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discrete automaton ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among the furniture. And herein the unconsciousness of the ogre Grampus was pleasantly conspicuous, for that complacent monster, believing that he was giving Mrs. Potsnap a treat, prolonged to the utmost stretch of possibility, a parapetetic account of an archery meeting, while his victim heading a possession of sixteen as it slowly circled about, like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes, except once to steal a glance at Mrs. Lamel, expressive of intense despair. At length the possession was dissolved by the violent arrival of a nutmeg, before which the drawing-room door bounced open as if it were a cannonball, and while that fragrant article dispersed through several glasses of coloured warm water was going the round of society, Mrs. Potsnap returned to her seat by her new friend. "Oh, my goodness," said Mrs. Potsnap, "that's over. I hope you didn't look at me." "My dear, why not? Oh, I know all about myself," said Mrs. Potsnap. "I'll tell you something I know about you, my dear," returned Mrs. Lamel in her winning way, "and that is, you are most unnecessarily shy." "My ain't," said Mrs. Potsnap, "I detest you, go along." This shot was levelled under her breath at the gallant grompus for bestowing an insinuating smile upon her in passing. "Pardon me, if I scarcely see my dear Mrs. Potsnap," Mrs. Lamel was beginning, when the young lady interposed, "if we are going to be for your friends, and I suppose we are, for you are the only person we ever proposed it, don't let us be awful. It's awful enough to be Mrs. Potsnap without being called so." "Call me, Georgiana." "Dear Mrs. Lamel began again." "Thank you," said Mrs. Potsnap. "Dear Mrs. Georgiana, pardon me, if I scarcely see my love while your ma's not being shy, is the reason why you should be." "Don't you really see that?" Asked Mrs. Potsnap, plucking at her fingers in a troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on Mrs. Lamel, now on the ground, "then perhaps it isn't." "My dear, as Georgiana, you'd affirm much too readily to my poor opinion. Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, or is only a confession of my downness." "Oh, you were not dull," returned Mrs. Potsnap. "I am dull, but you couldn't have made me talk if you were." Some little touch of conscience, answering this perception of her having gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs. Lamel's face to make it look brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her dear Georgiana, and shaking her head with an affectionate playfulness. Not that it meant anything, but that Georgiana seemed to like it. "What I mean is," pursued Georgiana, "that ma being so endowed with awfulness, and pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere, I mean at least everywhere where I am, perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it, I say it very badly, I don't know whether you can understand what I mean." "Perfectly, dear, as Georgiana," Mrs. Lamel was proceeding with every reassuring while, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back against the wall again, and her eyes closed. "Oh, there's ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye. Oh, I know she's going to bring him here. Oh, don't bring him, don't bring him. Oh, you'll be my partner with this glass in his eye. Oh, what shall I do?" This time, Georgiana accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet upon the floor, and was altogether in quite a desperate condition. But there was no escape from the majestic Mrs. Podsnap's production of an ambling stranger, with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other framed and glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ as if he described Mrs. Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft, brought her to the surface and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the piano played another set, expressive of his mournful aspirations after freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy motions, and the Ambler took Mrs. Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had struck out an entirely original conception. In the meantime, a stray personage of a meek demeanor who had wandered to the hearth rug, and got among the heads of tribes assembled there in conference with Mr. Podsnap, eliminated Mr. Podsnap's flush and flourish by a highly unpolite remark. No less than a reference to the circumstance that some half-dozen people had lately died in the streets of starvation. It was clearly ill timed after dinner. It was not adapted to the cheek of the young person. It was not in good taste. "I don't believe it," said Mr. Podsnap, putting it behind him. "The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because they were the inquests and the registrars' returns. Then it was their own fault," said Mr. Podsnap. Veneering another elders of tribes commended this way out of it, at once a shortcut and a broad road. The man of meek demeanor intimated that truly it would seem from the facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in question. As if, in their wretched manner, they had made their weak protests against it, as if they would have taken the liberty of staving it off if they could, as if they would rather not have been starred upon the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all parties. "There is not," said Mr. Podsnap, flushing angrily, "there is not a country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the poor, as in this country." The meek man was quite willing to concede that. But perhaps it rendered the matter even worse, a showing that there must be something appallingly wrong somewhere. "Where?" said Mr. Podsnap. The meek man hinted, "wouldn't it be well to try, very seriously, to find out where?" "Ah!" said Mr. Podsnap, "easy to say somewhere. Not so easy to say where, but I see what you're driving at. I knew it from the first." "Centralization?" "No." "Never with my consent. Not English." An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes, as saying, "There you have him. Hold him." He was not aware, the meek man submitted of himself, that he was driving at any "isation." He had no favourite "isation" that he knew of, but he certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was by names of house-who-ever so many syllables. Mighty-ask was dying of destitution and neglect necessarily English. "You know what the population of London is, I suppose?" said Mr. Podsnap. The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely nothing to do with it, if its laws were well administered. "And you know—at least I hope you know," said Mr. Podsnap, with severity—that Providence has declared that you shall have the poor always with you. The meek man also hoped he knew that. "I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Podsnap, with the portentous air. "I am glad to hear it. It will render you cautious how you fly in the face of Providence." In reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase, the meek man said, of which Mr. Podsnap was not responsible. He, the meek man, had no fear of doing anything so impossible, but Mr. Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and flourishing this meek man down for good. So he said, "I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings. It is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur—not that I admit it—the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. "It is not for me," Mr. Podsnap pointed me forcibly, as adding by implication, though it may be all very well for you. "It is not for me to impure the workings of Providence. I know better than that. I trust, and I have mentioned what the intentions of Providence are." "Besides," said Mr. Podsnap, flushing high up among his hairbrushes with a strong consciousness of personal front, "the subject is a very disagreeable one. I will go so far as to say, it is an odious one. It is not one to be introduced among our wives and young persons, and I," he finished with that flourish of his arm, which added more expressively than any words, "and I remove it from the face of the earth." Simultaneously, with this quenching of the meek man's ineffectual fire, George Ianna, having left the AMBLA up a lane of sofa in a no-thoroughfare of back-doring room to find his own way out, came back to Mrs. Lammell. And who should be with Mrs. Lammell, but Mr. Lammell, so fond of her? Alfred, my love? Here is my friend, George Ianna. Dear is girl, you must like my husband, next to me." Mr. Lammell was proud to be so distinguished by this special commendation to Mrs. Podsnap's favor, but if Mr. Lammell were prone to be jealous of his dear Saphronius friendships, he would be jealous of her feeling towards Mrs. Podsnap. "Say, George Ianna, darling," interposed his wife, "towards, shall I, George Ianna?" Mr. Lammell uttered the name of the delicate curve his right hand from his lips outward. "For never have I known Saphronius was not apt to take certain likings, so attracted and so captivated as she is by, shall I once more, George Ianna." The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, then said, turning to Mrs. Lammell much embarrassed. "I wonder what you like me for? I'm sure I can't think." "Dear is George Ianna, for yourself, for your difference from all around you?" "Well, that may be, for I think I like you for your difference from all around me," said George Ianna, with a smile of relief. "We must be going with the rest," observed Mrs. Lammell, rising to the show of unwillingness amidst a general dispersal. "We are real friends, George Ianna, dear." "Real?" "Good night, dear girl." She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon which her smiling eyes were fixed, but George Ianna held her hand while she answered in a secret and half-rightened tone. "Don't forget me when you're gone away and come again soon. Good night." Charming to see Mr. and Mrs. Lammell taking leaves so gracefully and going down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so charming to see their smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped moodily into separate corners of their little carriage, but to be sure that was a sight behind the scenes which nobody saw and which nobody was meant to see. Certain big heavy vehicles built on the model of the pod-snep plate took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much, and the less valuable articles got away after their various manners, and the pod-snep plate was put to bed. As Mr. Pod-snep stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirt-color like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation at Miss Pod-snep or any other young person properly born and bred could not be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted weighed and valued like the plate. That such a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate, or that such a young person's thoughts could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west by the plate, was a monstrous imagination which he would, on the spot, have flourished into space. This perhaps in some sort arose from Mr. Pod-snep's blushing young person being, so to speak, or cheek, whereas there is a possibility that there may be young persons of a rather more complex organisation. If Mr. Pod-snep, pulling up his shirt-color, could only have heard himself called "that fellow" in a certain short dialogue which passed between Mr. and Mrs. Lammel in their opposite corners of their little carriage rolling home. Sifronia, are you awake? Are I likely to be asleep, sir? Very likely, I should think, after that fellow's company, attend to what I am going to say. I have attended to what you have already said, have I not? What else have I been doing all tonight? Attend, I tell you, in a raised voice, to what I am going to say. Keep close to that idiot girl, keep her under your thumb. You have her fast, and you are not to let her go, do you hear? I hear you. I foresee there is money to be made out of this. Besides taking that fellow down a peg, we owe each other money, you know. Mrs. Lammel winced a little at the reminder, but only enough to shake her scents and essences anew into the atmosphere of the little carriage, as she settled herself afresh in her own dark corner. End of Book I Chapter 11 Chapter 12 The Sweat of an Honest Man's Brow Mr. Mortimer Lightwood and Mr. Eugene Rayburn took a coffee house dinner together in Mr. Lightwood's office. They had newly agreed to set up a joint establishment together. They had taken a bachelor cottage near Hampton on the brink of the Thames, with a lawn and a boat house, and all things fitting, and were to float with the stream through the summer and the long vacation. It was not summer yet, but spring, and it was not gentle spring ethereal mild, as in Thompson's seasons, but nipping spring, with an easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson's, Dixon's, Smith's, and Jones's seasons. The grating wind soared rather than blue, and as it soared, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. Every street was a sawpit, and there were no top sawyers, every passenger was an under sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and choking him. That mysterious paper currency, which circulates in London when the wind blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. When's can it come, with a can it go? It hangs in every bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks at every pump, cowers at every grating, shutters upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain behind the legions of iron rails. In Paris, where nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city there would be, but where wonderful human ants creep out of holes and pick up every scrap, there is no such thing, there it blows nothing but dust, there sharp eyes and sharp stomachs reap even the east wind and get something out of it. The wind sawed and the sawdust whirled, the shrubs wrung their many hands, bemoaning that they had been over persuaded by the sun to bud, the young leaves pined, the sparrows repented of their early marriages, like men and women, the colors of the rainbow were discernible, not in floor or spring, but in the faces of the people whom it nibbled and pinched, and ever the wind sawed and the sawdust whirled. When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the city which Mr. Podsnap so explanatory called London, London is at its worst. Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife. Such a gritty city, such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky, such a beleaguered city, invested by the great marsh-forters of Essex and Kent. So the two old school fellows felt it to be, as their dinner done, it turned towards the fire to smoke. Young blight was gone, the coffee house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were gone, the wine was going, but not in the same direction. The wind sounds up here, of course Eugene stirring the fire, as if we were keeping a lighthouse, I wish we were. "Don't you think it would bore us?" light would ask, not more than any other place, and there would be no circuit to go, but that's a selfish consideration, personal to me. And no clients to come," added Lightwood, "not that that's a selfish consideration at all personal to me." "If we were on an isolated rock in a stormy sea," said Eugene, smoking with his eyes on the fire, "Lady Tippins couldn't put off to visit us, or, better still, my foot off and get swamped. People couldn't ask one to wedding breakfasts. There would be no precedence to hammer at, except the plain sailing president of keeping the light up. It would be exciting to look out for X. But otherwise," suggested Lightwood, "there might be a degree of sameness in the life. I have thought of that also," said Eugene, "as if he really had been considering the subject in its various bearings with the night of the business. But it would be a defined and limited monotony. It would not extend beyond two people. Now, it's a question with me, Mortimer, whether a monotony defined with that precision, limited to that extent, might not be more enduring than the unlimited monotony of one's fellow creatures. As Lightwood laughed and passed the wine, he remarked, "And we shall have an opportunity in our boating summer of trying the question." "An imperfect one," Eugene acquiesced with a sigh, "but so we shall. I hope we may not prove too much for one another." "Now, regarding your respected father," said Lightwood, bringing him to a subject they had expressly appointed to discuss, "always the most slippery eel of eels of subjects to lay hold of." "Yes, regarding my respected father," assented Eugene, settling himself in his armchair, "I would rather have approached my respected father by candlelight as a theme requiring a little artificial buoyancy, but we will take him by twilight and liven to the glow of war's end." He stirred the fire again as he spoke, and having made it blaze resumed. "My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife, for his not generally respected son. With some money, of course, with some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected father let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting in future MRF, which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington. What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene! Not at all, I assure you." MRF, having always in the clearest manner, provided as he calls it, for his children, by peer-ranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little victims calling and course in life should be. MRF, pre-arranged for myself, that I was to be the barrister. I am, with the sight addition of enormous practice, which has not accrued, and also the married man I am not. "The first you have often told me. The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You know MRF, but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you. Filially spoken, Eugene. Perfectly so, believe me. And with every sentiment of affectionate deference towards MRF, but if he amuses me, I can't help it. When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew. I mean, the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence, that he was heir to the family embarrassments. We call it before the company of the family estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by and by, this, says MRF, is a little pillar of the church, was born, and became a pillar of the church, a very shaky one. My third brother appeared considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother, but MRF, not at all, put out by surprise, instantly declared him a circumnavigator. Was pitchforked into the navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself and was disposed of with highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by MRF, that he should have a mechanical genius, and so on. Therefore, I say that MRF amuses me. Attaching the lady, Eugene, there MRF ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are opposed to touching the lady. Do you know her? Not in the least. Hadn't you better see her? My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go down there labeled eligible on view, and meet the lady similarly labeled? Anything to carry out MRF's arrangements, I am sure, with the greatest pleasure, except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I, so soon born, so constantly so fatally? But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene. In susceptibility to boredom, return that worthy, I assure you I am the most consistent of mankind. Why it was but now that you are dwelling in the advantages of a monotony of two. In a lighthouse. Do we the justice to remember the condition? In a lighthouse. Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed into his usual gloom, and rousily said as he enjoyed his cigar. No, there is no help for it. One of the prophetic deliveries of MRF must ever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition to oblige him, he must submit to a failure. It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing, and the sawdust was whirling outside payload windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. "As if," said Eugene, "as if the churchyard ghosts were rising." He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth to exalt its flavour by comparing the fireside or the outside. When he stopped midway on his return to his armchair and said, "Apparently, one of the ghosts has lost its way and dropped in to be directed. Look at this phantom." Lightward, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and there, in the darkness of the entry, stood as something in the likeness of a man, to whom he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry. "Who the devil are you?" "I ask your pardons, Gavinies," replied the ghost in a horse, double-barrelled whisper, "but my either on you be lawyer, Lightward." "What do you mean by not knocking at the door?" demanded Mortimer. "I ask your pardons, Gavinies," replied the ghost as before, "that probable you was not aware your door stood open." "What do you want?" Here unto the ghost again hoarsely replied in its double-barrelled manner, "I ask your pardons, Gavinies, but might one on you be lawyer, Lightward?" "One of us is," said the honour of that name. "All right, Gavinies, both!" returned the ghost, carefully closing the room door. "Titler business!" Mortimer lighted the candles. They showed the visitor to be an ill-looking visitor, with a squinting leer, who as he spoke, fumbled at an old, sudden fur cap, formless and mangy, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying. "Now," said Mortimer, "what is it?" " Gavinies, both!" returned the man, and what he meant to be a weadling tone, "which on you might be lawyer, Lightward?" "I am lawyer, Lightward," ducking at him with a servile air. "I am a man, as gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, but I sweat of my brow, not the risk being done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I should wish a fool going for it to be swore in." "I am not a swearer in of people, man." The visitor, clearly anything but reliant on this assurance, doggedly muttered, "Elfred David." "Is that your name?" asked Lightward. "My name?" returned the man. "Now, I want to take an Alfred David." Which Eugene, smoking and contemplating him interpreted as meaning "Afer David." "I tell you, my good fellow," said Lightward, with his indolent laugh, "that I have nothing to do with swearing." "He can swear at you," Eugene explained, "and so can I, but we can't do more for you." Much discomforted by this information, the visitor turned the drowned dog or cat, puppy or kitten, about and about, and looked from one of the governors both to the other of the governors both, while he deeply considered within himself. At length he decided, "Then I must be took down." "Where?" asked Lightward. "Here," said the man, "imped an ink." "First, let us know what your business is about." "It's about," said the man, taking a step forward, dropping his horse voice and shading it with his hand. "It's about from far a ten thousand pound reward, that's what it's about, it's about murder, that's what it's about." "Come near the table, sit down, will you have a glass of wine?" "Yes, I will," said the man, "and I don't deceive you governors." It was given him, making a stiff arm to the elbow, he poured the wine into his mouth, tilted it into his right cheek as saying, "What do you think of it?" tilted it into his left cheek as saying, "What do you think of it?" jerked it into his stomach as saying, "What do you think of it?" To conclude, swept his lips as if all three replied, "We think well of it." "Will you have another?" "Yes, I will," he repeated, "and I don't deceive you governors," and also repeated the other proceedings. "Now," began Lightward, "what's your name?" "Why, there you're rather fast, Lawyer Lightward," he replied in a reminestrant manner, "don't you see Lawyer Lightward?" "Yeah, you're a little bit fast." "I'm going to earn for five to ten thousand pound by the sweat of my brow, and as a poor man doing justice to the sweat of my brow, is it likely I can afford to part with how much is my name without its being took down?" Deferring to the man's sense of the binding powers of pen and ink and paper, Lightward nodded acceptance of Eugene's nodded proposal to take those spells in hand. Eugene, bringing them to the table, sat down as clock or notary. "Now," said Lightward, "what's your name?" But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest fellow's brow. "I should wish, Lawyer Lightward," he stipulated, "to have that tough-eyed governor, it's my witness at what I said," I said. Conopsequent, all the tough-eyed governor, "be so good as to chuck me his name and where he lives." Eugene, cigar in mouth, and pen and hand tossed him his card. After spelling it out slowly, the man made it into a little roll and tied it up in an end of his neck-a-chief, still more slowly. "Now," said Lightward for the third time, "if you have quite completed your various preparations, my friend, and have fully ascertained that your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried, what's your name?" "Rogerado'd." "Dwelling place?" "Lime a soul." Calling on occupation. "Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr. Ryderhood gave in the definition, "wort their side character." "Anything against you?" Eugene quietly put in as he wrote. Rather bought, Mr. Ryderhood evasively remarked with an innocent air that he believed the other governor had asked him summit. "Ever in trouble," said Eugene, "wants, "mightn't do any man," Mr. Ryderhood added incidentally. "On suspicion of seaman's pocket," said Mr. Ryderhood. "Whereby I was in reality that man's best friend and try to take care of him." "With the sweat of your brow," asked Eugene, "till it poured down light rain," said Roger Ryderhood. Eugene leaned back in his chair and smoked with his eyes negligently turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing. Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer. "Now, let me be took down again," said Ryderhood, when he had turned the drowned cap over and under and had brushed it the wrong way, if it had a right way, with his sleeve. "I'll give information that the man that done the almond murder is Gaffa Exum," the man that found the body. "The Anne of Jesse Exum," commonly called Gaffa on the river and long shore, "is Anne that done that deed, is Anne and now other." The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they had shown yet. "Tell us in what grounds you make this accusation," said Mortimer Lightwood, "on the grounds," answered Ryderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve. "The Anne was Gaffa's partner," and suspected of him many a long day, and many a dark night. "On the grounds, the eye knowed his ways. On the grounds, the eye broke the partnership because I see the danger, which I warn you. His daughter may tell you another story about that, for anything I can say, but you know what it will be worth, for she tell you lies the world round of the heavens broad, the saber father. On the grounds, that is well understood along the cause eyes and the stairs that he done it. On the grounds, that is fell off from because he done it. On the grounds I'll swear he done it. On the grounds that you may take me where you will and get me sworn with. I don't want to back out of the consequences. I've made up my mind. Take me anyways." "All this is nothing," said Lightwood. "Nothing," repeated Ryderhood, indignantly and amazingly. "Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this man of the crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do so with no reason, but he cannot have become evicted on your suspicion." "Avon I said, I appeal or to the Tather Governor's Marwittness. Avon I said, from the first minute that I open my mouth in this ear world without any everlasting chair. He evidently used that form of words as next and forced to an affidavit. That I was willingness where that he done it. Avon I said, "Take me and get me sworn to it. Don't I say so now? You won't deny it, lawyer Lightwood?" "Surely not. But you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I tell you it is not enough to swear to your suspicion." "Not enough, ain't it, lawyer Lightwood?" He cautiously demanded. "A positively not." "And did I say it was enough? Now I appeal to the Tather Governor. Now fair, did I say so?" "He certainly has not said that he had no more to tell. Eugene observed in low voice without looking at him. Whatever he seemed to imply." "Ha!" Grad he informed her triumphantly, perceiving that the remark was generally in his favour, though apparently not closely understanding it. "Fortunate for me, I'd have witnessed." "Go on then," said Lightwood, "say out what you have to say. No afterthought." "Let me be took down then," cried the informer, eagerly and anxiously. "Let me be took down from by George and the dragon armor coming to it now. Don't do nothing to keep back from the honest man, the fruits of the sweat of his brow. Arging information then that he told me that he done it. Is that enough?" "Take care what you say, my friend," returned Mortimer. "Law your lightwood. Take care, you, what I say. For I challenge you'll be answerable for following it up." Then, slowly and emphatically beating it all out with his open right hand on the palm of his left, "I, Roger Radoed. Lymus old. War aside, character. Tell you, lawyer Lightwood, that the man, Jesse Exum, commonly called upon the river, and a long shore, gather, told me that he done the deed. What's more, he told me with his own lips, that he done the deed. What's more, he said, that he done the deed. In I'll swear it." "Where did he tell you, sir?" "Hapside," replied Radoed. Always beating it out with his head, terminally set a school, and his eyes watchfully dividing their attention between his two auditors. "Hapside, the door of the six jolly fellowships, towards a quarter up at twelve at midnight, but are not in my conscience, undertake the swear to so fine a matter as five minutes, on the night when he picked up the body. The six jolly fellowships won't run away. If he turns out that he won at the six jolly fellowships that night at midnight, I'm a liar." "What did he say?" "I'll tell you. Take me down, to the governor. I'll ask now better. You come out first. I'll come out last. I might be a minute, aren't I? I might be off a minute. I might be a quarter of a minute. I cannot swear to that, therefore I won't. That's now in the obligations of an Alfred David, ain't it?" "Go on. I found him and wait and speak to me." He says to me, Radoed Radoed, for that's the name I'm mostly called by, not for any meaning in it, for me nearly as none, but because of its being similar to Roger. "Never mind that. 'Scuse me, nor your light would. It's a part of the truth, and as such I do mind it, and I must mind it, and I will mind it." "Radoed Radoed," he says, words pass betwixt us on the river tonight. "Wish they add, ask your daughter." "I threaten you," he says, "to chop you over the fingers with my boat stretcher, or take a aim at your brain with my boat hook." "I did so on accounts of your looking too hard at what I had in tow, as if you were suspicious, and on accounts of your holding on to the gunler my boat." I says to him, gaffer, I know it. He says to me, Radoed Radoed, you are a man in a dozen. "I think," he said, in a score, "that I'm not positive, so take the lowest figure for precious be the obligations of Alfred David." "And," he says, "when your fellow men is up, be it their lives, or be it their watches, sharp as ever the word with you." "Ed, you suspicions?" R says, gaffer, I add. "And what's more, I have." He falls a shaken, and he says, "of what?" R says, "a foul play." He falls a shaken worse, and he says, "there was foul play, then. I had done it for his money. Don't betray me. Those were the words, as ever he used." There is a silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate. An opportunity which the informer improved by smearing himself all over the head and neck and face with his drowned cap, and not at all improving his own appearance. "What more?" asked Lightwood. "Of him, you mean, lawyer Lightwood?" "Of anything to the purpose." "Now, I'm blessed if I understand you, governor's both," said the informer, in a creeping manner, propitiating both the only one had spoken. "What ain't that enough?" "Did you ask him how he did it, where he did it, when he did it?" "Far be it from me, lawyer Lightwood. I was so troubled in me mind that I wouldn't have known more. No, not for the Sam as I expect to earn from you, by the sweat of my brow, twice told. I put it into the partnership. I had kept the connection. I couldn't undo what was done, and when he begs and prays old partner on my knees, don't split upon me. I only makes answer, never speak another word to Roger Raderode, nor look him in the face, and I shuns that man." Having given these words a swing to make them mount the higher and go the further, rogue-riderhood poured himself out another glass of wine unbidden, and seemed to chew it, as, with the half-empty glass in his hand, he stared at the canvas. Mortimer glanced at Eugene, but Eugene sat glowering at his paper, and would give him no responsive glance. Mortimer again turned to the informer, to whom he said, "You have been troubled in your mind a long time, man." Giving his wine final chew and swallowing it, the informer answered in a single word, "Hages!" When all that stir was made, when the government reward was offered, when the police were on the alert, when the whole country rang with the crime, said Mortimer impatiently, "Ha!" said Mr. Raderode, very slowly and hoarsely chimed in with several retrospective nods of his head, "Won't I troubled in my mind, then?" "When conjecture ran wild, and those extravagant suspicions were afloat, when half a dozen innocent people might have been laid by the heels any hour in the day," said Mortimer, almost warming. "Ha!" Mr. Raderhood chimed in us before, "Won't I troubled in my mind, through it all?" "But he hadn't," said Eugene, drawing a lady's head upon his writing paper, and touching it at intervals, "the opportunity, then, of earning so much money, you see." "The Tather governates the nail," Loria Lightwood. "It was there, it's turned me. I had many times, and again, struggled to relieve myself of the trouble on my mind, but I couldn't get it off. I once, very now I got it off," to Miss Abbey Poterson, which keeps the six joy fellowships. "There is the house, it might run away." "Here lives the lady, she ain't likely to be stuck dead before you get there. Ask her. But I couldn't do it." "At last, that comes a new bill with your own lawful name, Loria Lightwood, printed to it, and then I ask the question of my own intellect. I might have this trouble on my mind forever. Am I never a throw it off? How am I always to think more of Gaffa and of my own self? If he's got a daughter, I ain't I got a daughter?" "And echo answered," Eugene suggested. "You have," said Mr. Ridehood in a firm tone. Incidentally mentioning at the same time her age, inquired Eugene, "Yes, Governor, two and twenty last October, and now I put it to myself, regarding the money. It is a pot of money. For it is a pot," said Mr. Ridehood with candor, "and why deny it?" "Here," from Eugene as he touched his drawing, "it is a pot of money. But is it a sin for a labrian man at moistens every crust of bread he earns with his tears, or if not with them with the cold he catches in his head? Is it a sin for that man who earned it? Say there is anything again who earned it? He saw I put to myself strong as in jutely bound. How can it be said without blaming lawyer-like-wood for offering it to be earned? And was it for me to blame lawyer-like-wood?" "No." "No," said Eugene, "surning knock Gaffa," Mr. Ridehood acquiesced. "So I made up my mind and gave me trouble off my mind, and it earned by the sweat of me brow what was held out to me. And what's more?" He added suddenly turning bloodthirsty, "I mean to have it. And now I'll tell you once and away, lawyer-like-wood, that Jesse Exum, commonly called Gaffa, his hand and no other, done the deed on his own confession and a me, and I'll give him up to you, and I'll want him tuck, this night." After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate, which attracted the informer's attention as if it were the chinking of money, Mortimer Lightwood leaned over his friend and said in a whisper, "I suppose I must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend at the police station." "I suppose," said Eugene, "there is no help for it." "Do you believe him?" "I believe him to be a thorough rascal, but he may tell the truth for his own purpose, and for this occasion only. He doesn't look like it." "He doesn't," said Eugene, "but neither is his late partner whom he denounces a pre-possessing person. The firm are cutthroat shepherds both in appearance. I should like to ask him one thing." The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the governor's both glanced at him. "You mention, twice, I think, a daughter of this hexams," said Eugene aloud. "You don't mean to imply that she had any guilty knowledge of the crime?" The honest man, after considering, perhaps considering how his answer might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow, replied unreservedly, "No, I don't." "And you implicate no other person?" "Aye, what I implicate, it's gaffing like I did," was the dogged undetermined answer. "I don't pretend to know more than that his words to me was, I done it. Those were his words." "I must see this out, Mortimer," whispered Eugene, rising. "How shall we go?" "Let us walk," whispered Lightwood, and give this fellow time to think of it. Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves for going out, and Mr. Ryder had rose. While extinguishing the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course, took up the glass from which that honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments. "Now, if you'll take the lead," said Lightwood, "Mr. Raven and I will follow." "You know where to go, I suppose?" "I suppose I do, lawyer Lightwood." "Take the lead, then?" The water-side character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both hands, and making himself more round-shoulder than nature had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went down the stairs, round by the temple church, across the temple into white friars, and so on by the water-side streets. "Look at his hang-dog air," said Lightwood, following, "it strikes me rather as a hang-man, air," returned Eugene, "he has undeniable intentions that way." They said little else as they followed. He went on before them, as an ugly fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have been glad enough to lose sight of him, but on he went before them, always at the same distance and the same rate. A slant against the hard, implacable weather and the rough wind, he was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on like an advancing destiny. There came, and they were about midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail, which in a few minutes pulted the streets clear and whitened them. It made no difference to him, a man's life being to be taken, and the price of it got, the hail-stones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper than those. He crushed through them, leaving marks in the fast-melting slush, at were mere shapeless holes, while might have fancied following at the very fashion of humanity had departed from his feet. The blast went by, and the moon contended with the fast-flying clouds, and the wildest order raining up there made pitiful little two-mults in the street of no account. It was not that the wind swept all the brawlers into places of shelter as it had swept the hail still lingering in heaps, wherever there was refuge for it, but that it seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were all in the air. "If he has at time to think of it," said Eugene, "he has not had time to think better of it, or differently of it, if that's better. There is no sign of drawing back in him, and as I recollect this place, we must be close upon the corner where we are light at that night." In fact, a few abrupt turns brought them to the riverside, where they had slipped about among the stones, and where they now slipped more, the wind coming against them in slants and floors across the tide and the windings of the river in a furious way. With that habit of getting under the leave any shelter which waterside characters acquire, the waterside character at present in question led the way to the lee side of the six jolly fellowship porters before he spoke. "Look round here, lawyer Lightwood, at them rent curtains. It's the fellowships. The houses are told you wouldn't run away. And has it run away?" Not showing himself much impressed by this remarkable confirmation of the informer's evidence, Lightwood inquired what other business they had there. "I'll wish you to see the fellowships for yourself, lawyer Lightwood, that you might judge whether I'm a liar, and now I'll see Gaffa's window for himself that we may know whether he's at home." With that he crapped away. "He'll come back, I suppose," murmured Lightwood. "I, and go through with it," murmured Eugene. He came back after a very short interval indeed. "Gaffa's out. He's boats out. He's daughters at home, sitting there looking at the fire. But there's some supper getting ready, so Gaffa's expected. I can find or move these upon easy enough presently." Then he beckoned and led the way again. And they came to the police station, still as clean and cool and steady as before, saving that the flame of its lamp, being but a lamp flame, and only attached to the force as an outsider, flickered in the wind. Also within doors Mr. Inspector was at his studies as of your. He recognized the friends the instant they reappeared, but their reappearance had no effect on his composure. Not even the circumstance that riderhood was their conductor moved him. Otherwise, and that as he took a dip of ink, he seemed, by a settlement of his chin in his stock, to propound to that personage without looking at him, the question, "What have you been up to last?" Mortimer Lightwood asked him, "Would he be so good as to look at those notes?" handing him Eugene's. Having read the first few lines, Mr. Inspector mounted to that, for him, extraordinary pitch of emotion, that he said, "Does I, review gentlemen, and have a pinch of snuff about him?" Finding that neither had, he did quite as well without it, and read on. "Have you heard these red?" he then demanded of the honest man. "Now," said riderhood. Then he had better ear them. And so read them aloud in an official manner. "Are these notes correct now as to the information you bring here and the evidence you mean to give?" He asked when he had finished reading. "They are. They are as correct," returned Mr. Riderhood. "As I am, I can't say more than that for him." "I'll take this man myself, sir," said Mr. Inspector Delightwood. Then to Riderhood. "Is he at all? Where is he? What's he doing? You've made it your business to know all about him, no doubt." Riderhood said what he did know, and promised to find out in a few minutes what he didn't know. "Stop!" said Mr. Inspector. "Not till I tell you. We mustn't look like business." "Would you two, gentlemen, object to make in a pretense of taking a glass of something in my company at the fellowships?" well conducted house, an a highly respectable and lady. They replied they would be happy to substitute a reality for the pretense, which in the main appeared to be as one with Mr. Inspector's meaning. "Very good," said he, taking his hat from its peg and putting a pair of handcuffs in his pocket as if they were his gloves. "Reserve?" "Reserve, saluted. You know where to find me?" "Reserve again, saluted." "Riderhood?" I knew you found out concerning this coming home. "Come round to the window of Causi. Tap to eyes at it, and wait for me." "Now, gentlemen." As the three went out together and Riderhood slouched off from under the trembling lamp, his separate way, Lightwood asked the officer what he thought of this. Mr. Inspector replied, with two generality and reticence, that it was always more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that he hadn't. Had he himself had several times reckoned up gaffer, it had never been able to bring him to a satisfactory criminal total. And if the story was true, it was only in part true. At the two men, very shy characters, would have been jointly and pretty equally in it, but that this man had spotted the other to save himself and get the money. "And I think," added Mr. Inspector in conclusion, "that if all goes well with him, he's in a tolerable way of getting it. But this is the fellowship's gentleman where the lights are, I recommend dropping the subject. You can't do better than be interested in some limeworks anywhere down about North Fleet, and doubtful whether some of your lime don't get into bad company as it comes up in barges." "You hear, Eugene?" said Lightwood over his shoulder. "You are deeply interested in lime." "Without lime," returned that unmoved barrister at law, "my existence would be unilluminated by array of hope." End of Book 1 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Tracking the Bird of Prey The two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of Miss Abby Poterson, to whom their escort, presenting them and their pretended business over the half-door of the bar in a confidential way, preferred his figurative request that a mouthful of fire might be lighted in cozy. Always well disposed to assist the constituted authorities, Miss Abby, Bade, Bob Glittery, attend the gentleman to that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire and gaslight. Of this commission, the bear-armed Bob, leading the way with a flaming wisp of paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that cozy seemed to leap out of a dark sleep and embrace them warmly. The moment they passed the lintels of its hospitable door. "They burn sherry very well here," said Mr. Inspector, as a piece of local intelligence. "Perhaps you, gentleman, might like a bottle." The answer being, by all means, Bob Glittery, received his instructions from Mr. Inspector, and departed in a becoming state of alacrity engendered by reverence for the majesty of the law. "It's a certain fact," said Mr. Inspector, "at this man we have received our information from—indicating ride-a-hood with this thumb over his shoulder—as, for some time past, given the other man a bad name, arising out of your lime barges, not the other man has been avoided in consequence. I don't say what it means or proves, but it's a certain fact. I had it first from one of the opposite sects of my acquaintance—vaguely indicating this abbey with his thumb over his shoulder—down away at a distance, over yonder. Then probably Mr. Inspector was not quite unprepared for their visit that evening—lightward hinted. "Well, you see," said Mr. Inspector, "it was a question of making a move. It's of no use moving, if you don't know what your move is. You are better by far keep still. In the matter of this lime, I certainly add an idea that it might lie betwixt the two men. I always add that idea. Still, I was forced to wait for a start, and I wasn't so lucky as to get a start. This man, that we have received our information from, has got to start, and if you don't meet with a check, you may make the running and come in first. There may turn out to be something considerable for him that comes in second, and I don't mention who may or who may not try for that place. There's duty to do, and I shall do it, under any circumstances, to the best of my judgment and ability." "Speaking as a shipper of lime," began Eugene, "which no man has a better right to do than yourself, you know," said Mr. Inspector. "I hope not," said Eugene. "My father, having been a shipper of lime before me, and my grandfather before him, in fact, we having been a family immersed to the crowns of our heads in lime during several generations, I beg to observe that if this missing lime could be got hold of without any young female relative of any distinguished gentleman engaged in the lime trade, which I cherish next to my life, being present, I think it might be a more agreeable proceeding to the assisting bystanders, that is to say, lime burners." "I also," said Lightwood, pushing his friend a side-bill laugh, "should much prefer that." "It shall be done, gentlemen, if it can be done conveniently," said Mr. Inspector, with coolness. "There is no wish on my part to cause any distress in that quarter. Indeed, I'm sorry for that quarter." "There was a boy in that quarter," remarked Eugene. "He is still there." "No," said Mr. Inspector, "he has quitted those works, he is otherwise disposed of." "Will she be left alone, then?" asked Eugene. "She will be left," said Mr. Inspector, alone. Bob's reappearance of the steaming jug broke off the conversation. But although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its contents had not received that last happy touch which this surpassing finish of the six jolly fellowship porters imparted on such momentous occasions. Bob carried in his left hand one of those iron models of sugar loaf hats before mentioned, into which he emptied the jug, and the pointed end of which he thrust deep down into the fire, so leaving it for a few moments while he disappeared and reappeared with three bright drinking glasses. Placing these on the table and bending over the fire, meritoriously sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he watched the wreaths of steam until at the special instant of projection he caught up the iron vessel and gave it one delicate twirl, causing it to send forth one gentle hiss. Then he restored the contents to the jug, held over the steam of the jug, each of the three bright glasses in succession. Finally filled them all, and with a clear conscience awaited the applause of his fellow creatures. It was bestowed, Mr. Inspector having proposed as an appropriate sentiment the lime trade, and Bob withdrew to report the commendations of the guests to Miss Abby in the bar. It may be here in confidence admitted that, the room being close shut in his absence, they had not appeared to be the slightest reason for the elaborate maintenance of this same lime fiction, only it had been regarded by Mr. Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught with mysterious virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to question it. Two taps were now heard at the outside of the window. Mr. Inspector hastily fortifying himself with another glass, strolled out for the noiseless foot and an unoccupied countenance, as one might go to survey the weather and the general aspect of the heavenly bodies. "This is becoming grim, Mortimer," said Eugene in a low voice. "I don't like this." "Nor I," said Lightwood, "shall we go?" "Being here, let us stay. You ought to see it out, and I won't leave you. Besides, that lonely girl with the dark hair runs in my head. It was little more than a glimpse we had of her that last time, and yet I almost see her waiting by the fire tonight. Do you feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when you think of that girl?" "Rather," returned Lightwood, "do you?" "Very much so." Their escort strolled back again and reported. Devested of its various limelight and shadows, his report went to the effect that Gaffo was away in his boat, supposed to be on his old lookout. That he had been expected last high water, that having missed it for some reason or other, he was not, according to his usual habits at night, to be counted on before next high water. Or it might be an hour or so later, that his daughter surveyed through the window would seem to be so expecting him, for the supper was not cooking, but set out ready to be cooked. That it would be high water at about one, and that it was now barely ten. There was nothing to be done but watch and wait, that the informer was keeping watch at the instant of that present reporting. But the two heads were better than one, especially when the second was Mr. Inspector's, and that the reporter meant to share the watch. And for as much as crouching under the leaf or hold up boat on a night, when it blew cold and strong, and when the weather was varied with blasts of hail at times, might be wearism to amateurs, the reporter closed with the recommendation that the two gentlemen should remain for a while at any rate in their present quarters, which were weather tight and warm. They were not inclined to dispute this recommendation, but they wanted to know where they could join the watchers when so disposed. Rather than trust to a verbal description of the place, which might mislead, Eugene, with a less weighty sense of personal trouble on him than he usually had, would go out with Mr. Inspector, note the spot, and come back. On the shelving bank of the river among the slimy stones of a causeway, not the special causeway of the six jolly fellowships which had a landing place of its own, but another, a little removed, and very near to the old windmill which was the denounced man's dwelling place, were a few boats, some moored and already beginning to float, others hauled up above the reach of the tide. Under one of these latter, Eugene's companion disappeared, and when Eugene had observed its position with reference to the other boats and had made sure that he could not miss it, he turned his eyes upon the building, where, as he had been told, the lonely girl with the dark hair sat by the fire. He could see the light of the fire shining through the window. Perhaps it drew him on to look in. Perhaps he had come out with the express intention. That part of the bank, having ranked grass growing on it, there was no difficulty in getting close, without any noise or footsteps. It was but to scramble up a ragged face of pretty hard mud, some three or four feet high, and come upon the grass and to the window. He came to the window by that means. She had no other light of the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp stood on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brasia with her face leaning on her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on her face, which at first he took to be the fitful firelight, but on a second look he saw that she was weeping, a sad and solitary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and the falling of the fire. It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not curtained. He chose it because the larger window near it was. It showed him the room and the bills upon the wall respecting the drowned people starting out and receding by turns, but he glanced slightly at them, though he looked long and steadily at her. A deep rich piece of colour, with the brown flush of her cheek, and the shining luster of her hair, though sad and solitary, weeping by the rising and the falling of the fire. She started up. He had been so very still that he felt sure it was not he who had disturbed her, so merely withdrew from the window and stood near it in the shadow of the wall. She opened the door and said an alarmed tone, "Father, was that you calling me?" and again, "Father?" and once again, after listening, "Father, I thought I heard you call me twice before." No response. As she re-entered at the door, he dropped over the bank and made his way back among the ooze and near the hiding-place to Mortimer Lightwood, to whom he told what he had seen of the girl and how this was becoming very grim indeed. "If the real man feels as guilty as I do," said Eugene, "he is remarkably uncomfortable." "Influence of secrecy," suggested Lightwood, "I am not at all obliged to it for making me guy forks in the vault and a sneak in the area both at once," said Eugene, "give me some more of that stuff." Lightwood helping him to some more of that stuff, but it had been cooling and didn't answer now. "Pfft!" said Eugene, spitting it out among the ashes, "taste like the wash of the river." "Are you so familiar with the flavour of the wash of the river?" "I seem to be tonight. I feel as if I had been half-drowned and swallowing a gallon of it." "Influence of locality," suggested Lightwood, "you are mighty learned tonight, you and your influences," returned Eugene. "How long shall we stay here?" "How long do you think?" "If I could choose, I should say a minute," replied Eugene, "for the jolly fellowship porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known, but I suppose we are best here until they turn us out with the other suspicious characters at midnight." Thereupon he stirred the fire and sat down on one side of it. It struck eleven, and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But gradually he took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other leg, and then in one arm, and then in the other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his back, and then in his forehead, and then in his hair, and then in his nose, and then he stretched himself, recumbent on two chairs, and groaned, and then he started up. Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarmed in this place, I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary, under the meanest circumstances, and the mermaidons of justice are at my heels. "I am quite as bad," said Lightwood, sitting up facing him with a tumbled head, after going through some wonderful evolutions, in which his head had been the lowest part of him. "This restlessness began with me long ago. All the time you're out," I felt like Gulliver with the little puttians firing upon him. "It won't do, Mortimer. We must get into the air. We must join our dear friend and brother, Ryderhood, and let us tranquilize ourselves by making a compact. Next time, with the view to our peace of mind, we'll commit the crime, instead of taking the criminal. You swear it? Certainly, sworn, let Tippins look to it, her life's in danger. Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and Bob appeared to transact that business with him, whom Eugene, in his careless extravagance, asked if he would like a situation in the line trade. "Thank you, sir. No, sir," said Bob, "I've got good situation here, sir." "If you'll change your mind at any time," returned Eugene, "come to me at my works, and you'll always find an opening in the line killing." "Thank you, sir," said Bob. "This is my partner," did Eugene, who keeps the books and attends to the wages. A fair day's wages for a fair day's work is ever my partner's motto. "And a very good and aged gentleman," said Bob, receiving his fee and drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much as he would have drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine. "Eugene!" Mortimer apostatized him, laughing quite heartily when they were alone again. "How can you be so ridiculous?" "I am in a ridiculous humor," quote Eugene. "I am a ridiculous fellow. Everything is ridiculous. Come along." It passed into Mortimer Lightwood's mind, that a change of some sort best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and most negligent and reckless in his friend had come upon him in the last half hour or so. Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something new and strained in him that was for the moment perplexing. This passed into his mind and passed out again, but he remembered it afterwards. "There's where she sits, you see," said Eugene when they were standing under the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. "There's the light of her fire." "I'll take a piece of the window," said Mortimer. "No, don't," Eugene caught him by the arm, "embest, not to make a show of her. Come to our honest friend." He led him to the post of watch, and it both dropped down and crept under the leave of the boat. A better shelter than it had seen before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night. "Mr. Inspector at home," whispered Eugene. "Here I am, sir." And our friend of the perspiring brows of the far corner there, good. Anything happened. His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was assigned to keep him out of the way it might have been. "It might have been Rule Britannia," muttered Eugene, but it wasn't. Mortimer. "Here," on the other side of Mr. Inspector. "Two burglaries now, and a forgery." With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell silent. They were all silent for a long while, as it got to be flood-tied and the water came nearer to them, noises on the river became more frequent, and they listened more. To the turning of steam paddles, to the clinking of iron chain, to the creaking of blocks, to the measured working of oars, to the occasional violent barking of some passing dog on shipboard, who seemed to scent them, but lying in their hiding-place. The night was not so dark but that, besides the lights of bows and mastheads gliding to and fro, they could discern some shadowy bulk attached, and now and then, a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a warning arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time of their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion, given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat they lay in wait for, running in ashore, and again and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the river, kept quiet in his place. The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city-church clocks, for those later leeward of them. But there were bells to winward that told them of its being one, two, three. Without that aid they would have known how the night wore by the falling of the tide, recorded in the appearance of an ever-widening black wets dip of shore, and the emergence of the paved causeway from the river, foot by foot. As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and more precarious one. It was seem as if the man had had some intimation of what was in hand against him, or had taken fright. His movements might have been planned again for him in getting beyond their reach twelve hours' advantage. The honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and began to complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him. Him invested with the dignity of labour. Their retreat was so chosen, that while they could watch the river, they could watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the daughter thought she heard the father calling. No one could pass in or out without being seen. "But it will be lied at five," said Mr. Inspector, "and then we shall be seen." "Look here," said Ryder Hood, "what do you say to this? He may have been lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two or three bridges for hours back." "What do you make of that?" said Mr. Inspector, still a call, but contradictory. "He may be doing so at this present time." "What do you make of that?" said Mr. Inspector. "My boats among them boats here at the cause, eh?" "And what do you make of your boat?" said Mr. Inspector. "What if I put off in her and take a look around? I know his ways, and the lightly nooksie favours. I know where he'd be at such a time of the tide, and where he'd be at such another time. Ain't I been his partner? None of you need show. None of you need stir and shove her off without help, and as to me being seen, I'm about at all times." "You might have given a worse opinion," said Mr. Inspector, after brief consideration. "Try it." "Stop a bit. Let's work it out. If I want you, I'll drop round under the fellowships and tip you a whistle." "If I might so far presume as to offer a suggestion to my honourable and gallant friend whose knowledge of naval matters far be it from me to impeach." Eugene struck in with great deliberation. "It would be that to tip a whistle as to advertise mystery and invite speculation. My honourable and gallant friend will, I trust, excuse me, as an independent member for throwing out a remark which I feel to be due to this house and the country." "Was that the Tather Governor or Lawyer Lightwood?" asked Riderhood, or they spoke as they couched or lay without seeing one another's faces. "In reply to the question put by my honourable and gallant friend," said Eugene, who was lying on his back with his hat on his face as an attitude highly expressive of watchfulness. "I can have no hesitation in replying it not being inconsistent with the public service. Now those accents were the accents of the Tather Governor." "You horrible good eyes, ain't you, Governor? You all horrible good eyes, ain't you?" demanded the informer. "All." "Then if I row up under the fellowship and lay there, down the whistle, you'll make it out that there's a speck of something, or another there, and you'll know it's me, and you'll come down that cosy to me, and I stood all?" "Understood, all." "Oh, she goes, then." In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways, he was staggering down to his boat, in a few moments he was clear and creeping up the river under their own shore. Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into the darkness after him. "I wish the boat of my honorable and gallant friend," he murmured, lying down again and speaking into his hat, "maybe endowed with philanthropy enough to turn bottom upward and extinguish him. Mortimer? My honorable friend?" "Three burglaries, two forgeries and a midnight assassination." Yet in spite of having those weights on his conscience, Eugene was somewhat enlivened by the late slight change in the circumstances of affairs, so were his two companions. Its being a change was everything. The suspense seemed to have taken a new lease, and who had begun afresh from a recent date. There was something additional to look for. They were all three more sharply on the alert, and less deadened by the miserable influences at the place and time. More than an hour had passed, and there were even dozing, when one of the three, each said it was he, and he had not dozed, made out ride-a-hood in his boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang up, came out on their shelter, and went down to him. When he saw them coming, he dropped alongside the causeway so that they, standing on the causeway, could speak with him in whispers under the shadowy mass of the six jolly fellowship porters fast asleep. "Blessed if I can make it out," said he, staring at them. "Make what out! Have you seen him?" "No." "What have you seen?" asked Lightwood, for he was staring at them in the strangest way. "I've seen his boat." "Not empty?" "Yes. Empty. And what's more, a drift? And what's more, with one scar gone? And what's more, with Tava's scar jammed in the thowls and broke short off? And what's more, the boats drove tight by the tide, it twixt two tears of barges. And what's more, he's in luck again by George if he ain't." End of Book 1 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 The Bird of Prey Brought Down Cold on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden crisis in the four and twenty hours, when the vital force of all the noblest and prettiest things that live, is at its lowest, the three watchers looked each at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the blank face of Ryderhood in his boat. "Gather's boat! Gather in luck again! And yet, no, Gather!" So spake Ryderhood, staring, disconsulate. As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes towards the light of the fire shining through the window. It was fainter and duller. Perhaps fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to sustain, has its greatest tendency towards death, when the night is dying and the day is not yet born. "If it was me that had the lord of this year job in hand," growled Ryderhood, with a threatening shake of his head, blessed if I wouldn't lay out of her at any rate. "Aye, but it's not you," said Eugene, with something so suddenly fierce in him, at the informer returned submissively, "Well, well, well, o'er each other, governor, or didn't say it was a man, I speak. And vermin may be silent," said Eugene, "hold your tongue, you water rat." Astonished by his friend unusual heat, light would stare too, and then said, "What can have become of this man?" "Can't imagine, unless he dived overboard." The informer wiped his brow ruefully as he said it, sitting in his boat and always staring disconsulate. "Did you make his boat fast?" "She's fast enough, till the tide runs back. I couldn't make her faster than she is. Can't the board a mine, see for her own selves?" There was a little backwardness in complying, for the freight looked too much for the boat, but on right-hoods protesting that he had had half a dozen dead and alive in her a four now, and she was nothing deep in the water nor down in the stern even then to speak of, they carefully took their places and trimmed the crazy thing, while they were doing so by the hood still set staring disconsulate. "All right, give way," said Lightwood. "Give way by George," repeated right-hood before shoving off, "if he's gone, and made off anyhow, Lawyer Lightwood, it's enough to make me give way in a different manner, but he always was a cheat, confound him. He always was an infernal cheat, was gaffer, nothing straight-forward, nothing on the square, so mean, so underhanded, never going through with a thing or carrying it out like a man." "Hello? Steady?" cried Eugene. He had recovered immediately unembarking, as they bumped heavily against a pile, and then, in a lower voice, reversed his late apostrophe by remarking. "I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend, may be endowed with philanthropy enough not to turn, bottom upward, and extinguish us. Steady? Steady? Sit close, Mortimer. Here's the hail again." See how it flies like a troop of wild cats at Mr. Riderhood's eyes? Indeed he had the full benefit of it, and it so mauled him, though he bent his head low and tried to present nothing but the mangy cap to it, that he dropped under the lee of a tear of shipping, and they lay there until it was over. The squall had come up like a spiteful messenger before the morning. They followed in its wake a ragged tear of light which ripped the dark clouds, until they showed a great grey hole of day. They were all shivering, and everything about them seemed to be shivering. The river itself, craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as there yet was on the shore. Black with wet and altered to the eye by white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower than usual, as if they were cowering and had shrunk with the cold. Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were shut, and the staring black and white letters upon warves and warehouses. "Looked!" said Eugene to Mortimer, like inscriptions over the graves of dead businesses. As they glided slowly on, keeping under the shore, and sneaking in and out among the shipping by back alleys of water in a pilfering way, there seemed to be their boatman's normal manner of progression. All the objects among which they crept were so huge in contrast with their wretched boat as to threaten to crush it. Not a ship's hull, with its rusty iron links of cable, ran out of housing holes, long discoloured with the iron's rusty tears, but seemed to be there with a fell intention. Not a figurehead, but had the menacing look of bursting forward to run them down, not a slusgate or a painted scale upon a post or wall, showing the depth of the water but seemed to hint like the dreadfully facetious wolf in bed and grandma's cottage, that's to drown you in my dears. Not a lumbering black barge with its cracked and blistered side impending over them, but seemed to suck at the river with a thirst for sucking them under. And everything so wanted the spoiling influences of water, discoloured copper, rotten wood, honey-combed stone, green dank deposit. At the after-consequences of being crushed, sucked under and drawn down, looked as ugly to the imagination as the main event. Some half-hour of this work, and ride-a-hood unshipped his skulls, stood holding onto a barge, and hand over hand long-wise along the barge's side, gradually worked his boat under her head into a secret little nook of scummy water. And driven into that nook and wedge that he had described was Gaffa's boat. That boat with the stain still in it, bearing some resemblance to a muffled human form. "Now tell me I'm a liar," said the honest man, "with a morbid expectation," murmured Eugene to Lightwood, "that somebody is always going to tell him the truth." "This is Exham's boat," said Mr. Inspector, "I know her well." "Look at the broken skull! Look at the tether skull gone! Now tell me I'm a liar," said the honest man. Mr. Inspector stepped into the boat, Eugene and Mortimer looked on. "And see now," added Ride-a-hood, creeping aft, and showing a stretched rope made fast there, and towing overboard. "Didn't I tell you he was in luck again?" "Haul in," said Mr. Inspector. "Easy to say, haul in," answered Ride-a-hood. "Nook so easy, Dan. His luck's got fouled under the cage of the barge's. I thought all in last time that I couldn't see how taught the line is." "I must have it up," said Mr. Inspector. "I'm going to take this boat ashore, and his luck along with it. Try easy now." "He tried easy now, but the luck resisted wouldn't come." "I mean to have it, and the boat too," said Mr. Inspector, playing the line. "But still the luck resisted wouldn't come." "Tight care," said Ride-a-hood, "you disfigure or pull a sander perhaps." "I'm not going to do either, not even to your grandmother," said Mr. Inspector. "I mean to have it." "Come." He added it once persuasively, and with authority to the hidden object in the water, as he played the line again. "It's no good, this order game, you know. You must come up, I mean to have you." There was so much virtue in this distinctly and decidedly meaning to have it, that it ealed a little even while the line was played. "Told you so," caught Mr. Inspector, pulling off his outer coat, and leaning well over the stern with the will. "Come." It was an awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr. Inspector than if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening by some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain minutes and a few directions to the rest too, "Easer little forward," and now, "Easer a trifle aft," and the like, he said compositely, all clear, and the line and the boat came free together. Accepting Lightwood's prophet hand to help him up, he then put on his coat, and said to Ride-a-hood, "And me over those spare skulls of yours, and I'll pull this into the nearest stairs. Go ahead, you, and keep out in pretty open water, then I may get fouled again." His directions were obeyed, and they pulled ashore directly, two in one boat, two in the other. "Now," said Mr. Inspector again to Ride-a-hood, when they were all on the slushy stones, "you have had more practising this than I have had, and ought to be a better workman at it. Undo the two rope, and we help you haul in." Ride-a-hood got into the boat accordingly. It appeared as if he had scarcely had a moment's time to touch the rope or look over the stern when he came scrambling back, as pale as the morning, and gasped out, "By the Lord! He's done me!" "What do you mean?" they all demanded. He pointed behind him at the boat, and gasped to that degree that he dropped upon the stones to get his breath. "Gafers, done me! It's gaffer!" They ran to the rope, leaving him gasping there. Soon the form of the bird of prey dead some hours, lay stitched upon the shore with a new blast storming at it and clotting the wet hair with hailstones. "Father, was that you calling me? Father, I thought I heard you call me twice before. Words never to be answered, those upon the earth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps duringly over Father, whips him with the frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and forces face towards the rising sun that he may be shamed more. Alul, as the wind is secret and prying with him, lifts and that falls a rag, hides palpitating under another rag, runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you thus baptized unto death, with these flying impurities now flung upon your face? Why not speak, Father? Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here is your own shape. Did you never see such a shape soaked into your boat? Speak, Father, speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you. "Now see," said Mr. Inspector, after mature deliberation, kneeling on one knee beside the body when they had stood looking down on the drowned man, as he had many a time looked down on many another man. The way of it was this. Of course, you gentlemen hardly fail to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms. They had helped to release the rope, and of course not. And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, at this knot which was drawn chock tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms is a slipknot, holding it up for demonstration, plain enough. Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to his boat. It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound. "Now see," said Mr. Inspector, "see how it works around upon him. It's a wild tempestuous evening when this man that was, stooping to wipe some heel stones out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket there. Now he's more like himself, though he's badly bruised. When this man that was, rose out upon the river on his usual lay. He carries with him this coil of rope. He always carries with him this coil of rope. It's as well known to me as he was himself. Sometimes it lay in the bottom of his boat. Sometimes he hung it loose round his neck. He was a light dresser, was this man, you see? Lifting the loose neck of chief over his breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the dead lips with it. And when it was wet or freezing or blue cold, he would hang this coil of line round his neck. Last evening he does this, worse for him. He dodges about on his boat, does this man, till he gets chilled. His hands, taking up one of them which dropped like a leaden weight, get numbed. He sees some object that in his way of business floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He unwinds the end of his core that he wants to take some turns on in his boat, and he takes turns enough on it to secure that it shan't run out. He makes it too secure as it happens. He is a little longer about this than usual, his hands being numbed. His object drifts up before he's quite ready for it. He catches at it, thinks he'll make sure of the contents of the pockets anyhow in case he should be parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls or in the crossswell of two steamers or in not being quite prepared or through all or most of some, gets a lurch, overbalances, and goes head foremost overboard. Now see, he can swim, can this man, and instantly strikes out. But in such striking out, he tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slipknot, and it runs home. The object he had expected to take in tow, floats by, and his own boat tows him dead, so where we found him, all entangled in his own line. You'll ask me how I make out about the pockets. First, I'll tell you more, there was silver in him. How do I make that out? Simple and satisfactory, because he's got it here. The lecturer held up the tightly clenched right hand. 'What is to be done with the remains?' asked Lightwood. 'If you wouldn't object to stand in by him, offer me nitsa,' was the reply. 'I'll find the nearest of our men to come and take charge of him.' 'I still call it 'im,' you see,' said Mr. Inspector, looking back as he went, with a philosophical smile upon the force of habit. 'Yugene,' said Lightwood, and was about to add, 'we may wait at a little distance, when turning his head he found that no Eugene was there.' He raised his voice and called, 'Jugene, hello?' But no Eugene replied. It was broad daylight now, and he looked about, but no Eugene was in all the view. Mr. Inspector, speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a police constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave them. Mr. Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go, but had noticed that he was restless. Singular and entertaining combinations, sir, your friend. 'I wish it had not been a part of his singular entertaining combination to give me the slip under these dreary circumstances at this time of the morning,' said Lightwood. 'Can we get anything hot to drink?' We could, and we did, in a public house-kitchen with a large fire. We got hot brandy in water, and it revived us wonderfully. Mr. Inspector, having to, Mr. Ryderhood, announce his official intention of keeping his eye upon him, stood him in a corner of the fireplace, like a wet umbrella, and took no further outward invisible notice of that honest man, except ordering a separate service of brandy in water for him, apparently out of the public funds. As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of drinking brandy in water, then and there, in his sleep, and yet, at one at the same time, drinking burnt sherry at the six jolly fellowships, and lying under the boat on the river shore, and sitting in the boat that Ryderhood rode, and listening to the lecture recently concluded, and having to dine in the temple with an unknown man who described himself as M.H.F. Eugene Gaffa Harmon, and said he lived a tailstorm. As he passed through these curious vicissitudes of fatigue and slumber arranged upon the scale of a dozen hours to the second, he became aware of answering aloud a communication of pressing importance that had never been made to him, and then turned it into a cough on beholding Mr. Inspector; for he felt, with some natural indignation, that that functionary might otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or wandering in his attention. "Here, just before us, you see," said Mr. Inspector. "I see," said Lightwood with dignity, "and had hot brandy in water, too, you see," said Mr. Inspector, and then cut off at a great rate. "Who?" said Lightwood, "your friend, you know. I know," he replied again with dignity. After hearing in a mist through which Mr. Inspector loomed vague and large, that the officer took upon himself to prepare the dead man's daughter for what had befallen in the night, and generally that he took everything upon himself, Mortimer Lightwood stumbled in his sleep to a cab stand, called a cab, and had entered the army and committed a capital military fence, and been tried by Court Marshall, and found guilty, and arranged his affairs and been marched out to be shot before the door banged. Hard work rowing the cab through the city to the temple for a cup of from five to ten thousand pounds value given by Mr. Buffon, and hard work holding forth at that immeasurable length to Eugene when he had been rescued with a rope from the running pavement and making off in that extraordinary manner. But he offered such ample apologies, and was so very penitent that when Lightwood got out of the cab he gave the driver a particular charge to be careful of him, which the driver, knowing there was no other fare left inside, stared at, prodigiously. In short, the night's work had so exhausted and worn out this actor in it that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent round to Eugene's lodging hard by to inquire if he were up yet. Oh, yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had just come home, and here he was, close following on the heels of the message. "Why? What bloodshot drag on the shoveled spectacle is this?" cried Mortimer. "Oh, my feathers so very much rumpled," said Eugene, coolly going up to the looking-class. "They are rather out of sorts, but consider such a night for plumage." "Such a night?" repeated Mortimer. "What became of you in the morning?" "My dear fellow," said Eugene, sitting on his bed, "I felt that we had bored on another so long, or at an unbroken continuance of those relations must inevitably terminate in our flying to opposite points of the earth. I also felt that I had committed every crime in the Newgate calendar, so, for mingled considerations of friendship and felony, I took a walk." End of Book I Chapter 14 Chapter 15. Two New Servants Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat after breakfast in the Balor, a prey to prosperity. Mr. Boffin's face denoted care and complication. Many disordered papers were before him, and he looked at them about as hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops, whom he was acquired at five minutes' notice to maneuver and review. He had been engaged in some attempts to make notes of these papers, but being troubled as men of his stamp often are with an exceedingly distrustful and corrective thumb, that busy member had so often interposed to smear his notes that they were little more legible and the various impressions of itself, which blurred his nose and forehead. It is curious to consider, in such a case as Mr. Boffin's, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk will center draw for many years and still lose nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a hapony worth of ink would blot Mr. Boffin to the roots of his hair and the calves of his legs without inscribing a liner and a paper before him, or appearing to diminish in the ink stand. Mr. Boffin was in such severe literary difficulties that his eyes were prominent and fixed and his breathing Mr. Taurus, when, to the great relief of Mrs. Boffin, who observed these symptoms of the alarm, the yard bell rang. "Whose that I wonder?" said Mrs. Boffin. Mr. Boffin drew a long breath, laid down his pen, looked at his notes as doubting whether he had the pleasure of their acquaintance and appeared on a second perusal of their countenances to be confirmed in his impression that he had not. When it was announced by the hammer-headed young man, Mr. Rokesmith. "Oh!" said Mr. Boffin. "Oh, indeed." "Ah, ah, and the wolf was me your friend, my dear." "Yes, ask him to come in." Mr. Rokesmith appeared. "Sit down, sir," said Mr. Boffin, shaking hands with him. "Mrs. Boffin, you're already acquainted with." "Well, sir, I'm rather unprepared to see you. For, I tell you the truth, I've been so busy with one thing and another that I've not had time to turn your offer over." "That's apology for both of us, for Mr. Boffin and for me as well," said the smiling Mrs. Boffin. "But you, we can talk it over now, can't I?" Mr. Rokesmith bowed, thanked her, and said he hoped so. "Let me see, then," resumed Mr. Boffin, with his hand to his chin. "It was, uh, secretary that you named, wasn't it?" "I," said Secretary, assented Mr. Rokesmith. "It, uh, rather puzzled me at the time," said Mr. Boffin, "and it rather puzzled me and Mrs. Boffin when we spoke with we'd afterwards, because, not to make a mystery of our belief, we've always believed a secretary to be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green bays or leather with a lot of little drawers in it. Now, you aren't the I take a liberty when I mention that you certainly ain't that." "Certainly not," said Mr. Rokesmith. But he had used the word in the sense of steward. "Why, as to steward, you see," returned Mr. Boffin, with his hand still to his chin, "the odds are that Mrs. Boffin and me may never go upon the water. Being both bad sailors, we should want the steward, if we did, but there's generally one provided." Mr. Rokesmith again explained, defining the duties he sought to undertake, as those of general superintendent or manager or overlooker or man of business. "Now, for instance, can," said Mr. Boffin, in his pouncing way, "if you went in my employment, what would you do?" "I would keep exact accounts of all the expenditure you sanctioned, Mr. Boffin. I would write your letters under your direction. I would transact your business with people in your pay or employment I would, with a glance and a half smile at the table, arrange your papers." Mr. Boffin rubbed his inky ear and looked at his wife. "And so arrange them, as to have them always in order for immediate reference, with a note of the contents of each outside it." "I'll tell you what," said Mr. Boffin, slowly crumpling his own blotted note in his hand. "If you'll turn to, at these present papers, and see what you can make of them, I'll show no better what I can make of you." "No sooner," said them done, relinquishing his hat and gloves, Mr. Rokesmith sat down quietly at the table, arranged the open papers into an orderly heap, cast his eyes over each in succession, folded it, docked it on the outside, laid it in a second heap, and, when that second heap was complete and the first gone, took him his pocket a piece of string and tied it together with a remarkably dexterous hand at a running curve and a loop. "Good," said Mr. Boffin, "very good. Now, let us hear what they all about. Will you be so good?" John Rokesmith read his abstracts aloud. "They will all about the new house." Decorators estimate, so much. Furniture estimate, so much. Estimate for furniture of offices, so much. Coach-makers estimate, so much. Horse dealers estimate, so much. Harness-makers estimate, so much. Goldsmith's estimate, so much. Total, so very much. Then came correspondence. Acceptance of Mr. Boffin's offer of such a date and to such an effect. Rejection of Mr. Boffin's proposal of such a date and to such an effect. Concerning Mr. Boffin's scheme of such another date, to such another effect. All compact and methodical. "Apple pie order," said Mr. Boffin, after checking off each inscription with his hand, like a man beating time. "And whatever you do with your ink, I can't think, for you're as clean as a whistle after it." "Now, as to a letter, let's," said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his hands and his pleasantly childish admiration. "Let's toil a next." "To whom shall it be addressed, Mr. Boffin?" "Anyone. Yourself." Mr. Rokesmith quickly wrote, and then read aloud. Mr. Boffin presents his compliments to Mr. John Rokesmith and begs to say that he has decided on giving Mr. John Rokesmith a trial in the capacity he desires to fill. Mr. Boffin takes Mr. John Rokesmith at his word, in postponing to some indefinite period the consideration of salary. It is quite understood that Mr. Boffin is in no way committed on that point. Mr. Boffin has merely to add that he relies on Mr. John Rokesmith's assurance that he will be faithful and serviceable. Mr. John Rokesmith will please enter on his duties immediately. "Well, how naughty!" cried Mrs. Boffin, clapping her hands. "That is a good one." Mr. Boffin was no less delighted. Indeed, in his own bosom, he regarded both the composition itself, and the device that had given birth to it as a very remarkable monument of human ingenuity. "And I tell you, my dearie," said Mrs. Boffin, "that if you don't close with Mr. Rokesmith now at once, and if you ever go amaddling yourself again with things never meant nor made for you, you'll have an apapexy, besides iron moulding your linen, and you bite my art." Mr. Boffin embraced his spouse for these words of wisdom, and then, congratulating John Rokesmith on the brilliancy of his achievements, gave him his hand and pledge of their new relations. So did Mrs. Boffin. "Now," said Mr. Boffin, who, in his frankness, felt that it did not become him to have a gentleman in his employment five minutes without reposing some confidence in him. "You must be let a little more into our affairs," Rokesmith. "I'll mention to you, when I made your acquaintance, or I might better say when you made mine, that Mrs. Boffin's intonations were set in in the way of fashion, but that I didn't know how fashionable we might or might not grow." "Well, Mrs. Boffin has carried the day, and we're going in neck and drop for fashion." "I rather inferred that, sir," replied John Rokesmith, from the scale on which your new establishment has to be maintained. "Yes," said Mr. Boffin, "is to be a spanker. Fact is, my literary man, named to me that I, so that she is, as I might say, connected, in which she has an interest, as property," inquired John Rokesmith. "Why, no," said Mr. Boffin, "not exactly that. I sort of have a family tie." "Association," the secretary suggested. "Ah," said Mr. Boffin, "perhaps. Anyhow, he daimed to me that the owl set aboard up. This eminently aristocratic mention to be let offsold. Me and Mrs. Boffin went to look at it, and fired it beyond it out, eminently aristocratic, though a trifle I and dull, which, after all, may be part of the same thing, took it. My literary man was so friendly as to drop into a charming piece of poetry on that occasion, in which he, complimented Mrs. Boffin, on coming at a possession of, how did it go, my dear?" Mrs. Boffin replied, "The gay, the gay and festive scene, the halls, the halls of dazzling light." "That's it. And it was made neat, huh, by there really being two walls in the house, a front them, and a backen, besides the servants. He likewise dropped into a very pretty piece of poetry, to be sure, respecting the extent, to which he would be willing to put himself out of the way, to bring Mrs. Boffin round, in case she should ever get low, in her spirits in the house. Mrs. Boffin has a wonderful memory. Will you repeat it, my dear?" Mrs. Boffin complied, by reciting the verse on which this obliging offer had been made, exactly, as she had received them. "I tell thee how the maiden wept, Mrs. Boffin, when her true love was slain, ma'am, and how her broken spirit slept, Mrs. Boffin, and never woke again, ma'am. I tell thee, if agreeable to Mr. Boffin, how the steed drew nigh, and left his lord afar. And if my tale, which I hope Mr. Boffin might excuse, should make you sigh, I strike the light guitar." "Correct to the letter," said Mr. Boffin, "and I consider that the poetry bring us both in, in a beautiful manner." The effect of the poem and the secretary being evidently to astonish him, Mr. Boffin was confirmed in his high opinion of it, and was greatly pleased. "Now, you see, Rokesmith?" he went on. "A literary man, with a wooden leg, is liable to jealousy. I shall therefore cast about, for comfortable ways and means, of not calling up Wigs' jealousy, but of keeping you, in your department, and keeping him, in his." "You're all!" cried Mrs. Boffin. "What I say is, the world's wide enough at all of us." "So is my dear," said Mr. Boffin, "when not literary, but when so, not so, and I am bound to bear in mind that I took Wig on, at a time when I had no thought of being fashionable, or of leaving the barre. To let him feel himself, anyway, slightly now, would be to be guilty of a meanness, and to act like having one's head turned by the halls of dazzling light, which lord forbid." "Rokesmith, what shall we say about your living in the house?" "In, this house?" "No, no, I've got other plans for this house, in the new house." "That will be as you please, Mr. Boffin. I hold myself quite at your disposal. You know where I live at present." "Well," said Mr. Boffin, after considering the point, "suppose you keep, as you are, for the present, and will decide by and by. You'll begin to take charge at once, of all that's going on in the new house, will you?" "Most willingly. I will begin this very day. Will you give me the address?" Mr. Boffin repeated it, and the secretary wrote it down in his pocket-book. Mrs. Boffin took the opportunity of his being so engaged to get a better observation of his face than she had yet taken. It impressed her in his favour, or she nodded aside to Mr. Boffin. "I like him." "I will see directly that everything is in train, Mr. Boffin." "Thank ye. Be an ear. Would you care at all to look round the bower?" "I should greatly like it. I have heard so much of its story." "Come," said Mr. Boffin, and he and Mrs. Boffin led the way. "A gloomy house, the bower, with sordid signs on it, of having been through its long existence as harmony jail in miserly holding. Bear of paint, bear of paper on the walls, bear of furniture, bear of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man's occupation must, like natural creations, fulfill the intention of its existence, or soon perish. This old house had wasted, more from destitute than it would have wasted from use, 20 years for one. A certain leanness falls upon houses not sufficiently imbued with life, as if they were nourished upon it, which was very noticeable here. The staircase, ballast raids, and rails had a spare look, an air of being denuded to the bone, which the panels of the walls and the jams of the doors and windows also bore. The scanty moveables partook of it, save for the cleanliness of the place, the dust into which they were all resolving would have lain thick on the floors, and those both in colour and in grain were worn like old faces that had kept much alone. The bedroom where the clutching old man had lost his grip on life was left, as he had left it. There was the old grizzly four-posed bedstead, without hangings, and with a jail-like upper rim of iron and spikes, and there was the old patchwork counterpane. There was the tight clenched old bureau, receding a top like a bad and secret forehead. There was the cumbersome old table with twisted legs the bedside, and there was the box upon it in which the will had lain. A few old chairs with patchwork covers, under which the more precious stuff to be preserved, had slowly lost its quality of colour, without imparting pleasure to any eye, stood against the wall. A hard family lightness was on all these things. "The room was kept like this, Rokesmith," said Mr. Buffon, "against the sun's return. In short, everything in the house was kept exactly as it came to us for empathy and approve. Even now, often has changed, but our own room below stays that you have just left. When the sun came home, for the last time in his life, and for the last time in his life, saw his father, it was most likely in this room that they met. As the secretary looked all round at, his eyes rested on a side door in a corner. "Another staircase," said Mr. Buffon, unlocking the door, leading down into the yard, "will go down this way as you might like to see the yard, and it's all in the road." When the sun was a little child, it was up and down these stairs that he mostly came and went to his father. He was very timid of his father. I've seen him sit on these stairs in his shy way, poor child, many a time. Mr. and Mrs. Buffon have comforted him, sitting with his little book on these stairs, often. "Ah, and his poor sister, too," said Mrs. Buffon. "And here's the sunny place on the white wall, where they one day measured one another. Their own little hands wrote up their names here, only with a pencil, but the names are here still, and the poor deers gone forever." "We must take care of the names, our lady," said Mr. Buffon. "We must take care of the names. They shan't be rubbed out in our time, nor yet, if we can help it in the time after us." Poor little children. "Ah, poor little children," said Mrs. Buffon. They had opened the door at the bottom of the staircase, giving on the yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scroll of the two unsteady, childish hands, two or three steps up the staircase. There was something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood, and in the tenderness of Mrs. Buffon, that touched the secretary. Mr. Buffon then showed his new man of business, the mounds, and his own particular mound, which had been left him as his legacy under the will before he acquired the whole estate. "It would have been enough for us," said Mr. Buffon. "In case it had pleased God to spare the last of those two young lives and sorrowful deaths, we didn't want the rest." At the treasures of the yard, at the outside of the house, and at the detached building, which Mr. Buffon pointed out as the residents of himself and his wife, during the many years of their service, the secretary looked with interest. It was not until Mr. Buffon had shown him every wonder of the bar twice over that he remembered his having duties to discharge elsewhere. "You have no instructions to give me, Mr. Buffon," in reference to this place. "Not any," wrote Smith, "no." "Might I ask, without seeming impertinent, whether you have any intention of selling it?" "Certainly not. In remembrance of our master, our old master's children, and our old service, me and Mrs. Buffon mean to keep it up as it stands." The secretary's eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at the mounds that Mr. Buffon said as if an answer to a remark. "Aye! Aye! That's another thing. I may sell them. No, I should be sorry. I see the neighbourhood deprived of him, too. It'll look a poor dead flat without the mounds. Still, I don't say I'm going to keep him always there for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There's no worry about it. At all I say it present. I ain't a scholar in much, Mr. Rokesmith, but I'm a pretty first scholar in dust. I can pass the mounds to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of, and likewise that they take no arm by standing where they do. "You'll look in tomorrow. Will you be so kind?" "Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete, the better you will be pleased, sir." "Well, at ain't that I'm in a mortal hurry," said Mr. Buffon, "only when you do pay people for looking alive, it's as well to know that they are looking alive. Ain't that your opinion?" "Quite," replied the secretary, and so withdrew. "Now," said Mr. Buffon to himself, subsiding into his regular series of turns on the yard, "if art am I be comfortable with the wig, I affairs will be going smooth." The man of low cunning had, of course, acquired a mastery over the man of high simplicity. The mean man had, of course, got the better of the generous man. How long such conquests last is another matter? That they are achieved is every day experience, not even to be flourished away by pod-snapperie itself. The undesining Buffon had become so far enmeshed by the wily-wig, that his mind misgave him. He was a very designing man, indeed, in purposing to do more for wig. It seemed to him, so skillful was wig, that he was plotting darkly, when he was contriving to do the very thing that wig was plotting to get him to do. And thus, while he was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on wig this morning, he was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve the charge of turning his back on him. For these reasons Mr. Buffon passed but anxious hours until evening came, and with it Mr. Wig, stumping leisurely to the Roman Empire. At about this period Mr. Buffon had become profoundly interested in the fortunes of a great military leader known to him as Bully Soyuz, but perhaps better known to fame and easier of identification by the classical student and a less botanic name of Bellisarius. Even this general's career paled in interest to Mr. Buffon before the clearing of his conscience with wig, and hence, when that literary gentleman had according to custom, eaten and drunk until he was all aglow, and when he took up his book with the usual chirping introduction. "And now, Mr. Buffon, sir, we'll decline and we'll fall." Mr. Buffon stopped him. "You remember, Wig, when I first told you that I wanted to make a sort of offer to you, let me get on my considering caps, sir," replied that gentleman, turning the open book face downwards. "When you first told me that you wanted to make a sort of offer to me, now let me think, as if they were the least necessity." "Yes, to be sure I do, Mr. Buffon. It was at my corner, to be sure it was. You would first ask me whether I liked your name, and Candor had compelled a reply in the negative case. Our little thought then, sir, our familiar, that name, would come to be." "I hope it will be more familiar still, Wig." "Do you, Mr. Buffon? Match obliged to you, I'm sure. Is it your pleasure, sir, that we decline and fall? With a faint of taking up the book. Not just yet a while, Wig. In fact, I have got another offer to make you." Mr. Wig, who had had nothing else in his mind for several nights, took off his spectacles with an air of bland surprise. "And I hope you'll like it, Wig." "Thank you, sir," returned that reticent individual. "I hope it may prove so. On all accounts, I'm sure. This as a philanthropic aspiration." "What do you think?" said Mr. Buffon, of "Not keeping a stall, Wig." "I think, sir," replied Wig, "that I should like to be shown a gentleman, prepare to make it worth my while." "Here he is," said Mr. Buffon. "Mr. Wig was going to say my benefactor, and had said my Bennett when a grand eloquent change came over him." "No, Mr. Buffon. Not you, sir." "Anybody but you?" "Do not fear, Mr. Buffon, that I shall contaminate the premises with your gold as bought with my lowly pursuits. I'm aware, sir, that it would not become me to carry on my little traffic under the windows of your mention. I've already thought of that and taken my measures." "No need to be bought out, sir." "Would Stephanie Fields be considered intrusive?" "If not remote enough, I can go remote, sir." "In the words of the poet's song, which I do not quite remember, thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam, bereft of my parents, bereft of home, I strange at something and what's his name, joy, behold, at Ledmond, the poor peasant boy." "And equally," said Mr. Weg, repairing the want of direct application in the last line, "be out my self on a similar footing." "No, Weg, Weg, Weg," demonstrated the excellent Buffon. "You are too sensitive." "I know I am, sir," returned Weg with obstinate magnanimity. "I am acquainted with my faults. I always was, from a child, too sensitive. But listen," pursued the golden dustman, "hear me out, Weg. You have taken in your head that I meet a pension you off." "Drew, sir," returned Weg, still with an obstinate magnanimity. "I am acquainted with my faults. I'll be it for me to deny them. I have taken it into my head. But I don't mean it." The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr. Weg, as Mr. Buffon intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his visage might have been observed, as he replied. "Now you, indeed, sir?" "No," pursued Mr. Buffon, "because that would express as I understand it, that you are not going to do anything to deserve your money. But you are, you are." "That, sir," replied Mr. Weg, cheering up bravely, "is quite another pair of shoes. Now, my independence, as a man, is again elevated. Now I no longer weep for the hour, when it offens his bar, the lord of the valley with offers came, neither does the moon hide a light from the heavens to night, and weep behind a cloud or any individual in the present company's shame pleased to proceed, Mr. Buffon." "Think you, Weg? Both are your confidence in me, and for your frequent dropping interpoetry, both of which is friendly. Well, then, my idea is that you should give up your stall, and that I should put you into the barrier to keep it for us. It's a pleasant spot, and a man with coals and candles, and a pound a week, might be in clover here." "Would that man, sir, we will say that man, for the purpose is of argument?" Mr. Weg made a smiling demonstration of greater obscurity here. "Would that man, sir, be expected to throw any other capacity in, or would any other capacity be considered extra? Now, let us, for the purposes of argument, suppose that man be engaged as a reader, say for the purposes of argument, in evening. Would that man's pay as a reader in evening be added to the other amount, which, adopt in your language, we will call clover? Or would it merge into that amount, or clover?" "Well," said Mr. Buffon, "I suppose it will be added." "I suppose it would, sir." "You are right, sir. Exactly my own views, Mr. Buffon." Here Weg rose, and balancing himself on his wooden leg, fluttered over his prey with extended hand. "Mr. Buffon? Consider it done. Say no more, sir. Not a word more. Master all and I are forever partied. The collection of balance will in future be reserved for private study with the object of making poetry tributary." Weg was so proud of having found this word that he said it again with a capital letter. "Tributary to friendship, Mr. Buffon, don't allow yourself to be made uncomfortable by the paying it gives me depart from my stock and stall. Similar emotion was undergone by my own father when promoted for his merits from his occupation as a waterman to a situation and a government. His Christian name was Thomas. His words at the time I was then an infant, but so deep was their impression on me that our commitment to memory were. Then farewell my trim-built weary, awes and coat and badge farewell, never more at Chelsea ferry shall your Thomas take the spell. My father got over it, Mr. Buffon, and so shall I." While delivering these valedictory observations Weg continually disappointed Mr. Buffon of his hand by flourishing it in the air. He now darted it at his patron who took it and felt his mind relieved of a great weight. Observing that as they had arranged their joint affair so satisfactorily he would now be glad to look into those of bully-soyers, which indeed had been left overnight in a very unpromising posture, and for whose impending expedition against the Persians the weather had been by no means favourable all day. Mr. Weg resumed his spectacles, therefore, but soyers was not to be of the party that night. For before Weg had found his place Mrs. Buffon's tread was heard upon the stairs so unusually heavy and hurried that Mr. Buffon would have started up at the sound, anticipating some occurrence much out of the common course even though if she had not also called to him in an agitated tone. Mr. Buffon hurried out, and found her on the dark staircase panting with a lighted candle in her hand. What's the matter, my dear? I don't know, I don't know, but I'll wish you'd come upstairs. Much surprised Mr. Buffon went upstairs and accompanied Mrs. Buffon into their own room. A second large room on the same floor as the room in which the late proprietor had died. Mr. Buffon looked all round him, and saw nothing more unusual, and various articles of folded linen on a large chest which Mrs. Buffon had been sorting. "What is it, my dear? Why, you're frightened. You frightened?" "I'm not one of that sort, certainly," said Mrs. Buffon as she sat down in a chair to recover herself and took her husband's arm. "But it's very strange." "What is, my dear?" "Noty. The faces of the old men and the two children are all over the house tonight." "My dear," exclaimed Mr. Buffon, but not without a certain uncomfortable sensation gliding down his back. "I know it must sound foolish, and yet it is so." "Where do you think you saw them?" "I don't know that I think I saw them anywhere." "I felt them," touched him. "No," felt them in the air. "I was sorting those things on the chest, and not thinking of the old man or the children, patissing into myself, and all in a moment. I felt there was a face growing out of the dark." "What face?" asked her husband, looking about him. "For a moment, he was the old man's, and then he got younger. For a moment, it was both the children's, and then it got older. For a moment, it was a strange face, and then it was all the faces." "And then it was gone?" "Yes, and then it was gone." "Where were you then, old lady?" "Here, at the chest. Well, I got the better of it, and went on sorting, and went on singing to myself, "Lord, I say this, I think of something else, something comfortable, and put it out of my head. So I thought of the new house, and Miss Bella Wilfer, and was thinking at a great rate with that sheet there in my hand. When all of a sudden, the faces seemed to be hidden in among the folds of it, and I let it drop." As it still lay on the floor, where it had fallen, was to buffen picked it up, and laid it on the chest. "And then, you ran down stairs?" "No, I thought, I'd try another room and shake it off. Our system itself, I'll go and walk slowly up and down the old man's room three times, from end to end, and then I shall have conquered it. I went in with the candle in my hand, but at the moment I came near the bed. The air got thick with them." "Where the faces?" "Yes, now I even felt that they were in the dark behind the side door, and on the little staircase, floating away into the yard. Then I called you." "Mr. Buffon, lost an amazement, looked at Mrs. Buffon. Mrs. Buffon lost in her own flattered inability to make this out. Looked at Mr. Buffon." "I think, my dear," said the Golden Dustman, "I, at once, get rid of Wake for the night, because he's coming to inhabit the bower, and it might be put into his head, or somebody else's, if he heard this, and it got about that the house is haunted, whereas we know better, don't we? I never had the feeling in the house before," said Mrs. Buffon, "and I have been about it alone in all hours at the night. I've been in the house when death was in it, and I've been in the house when murder was a new part of his adventures, and I never had a fright in it yet." "And won't again, my dear," said Mr. Buffon, "depending upon it, it comes a thinking and dwelling on that dark spot." "Yes, but why didn't it come before?" asked Mrs. Buffon. "This draught on Mr. Buffon's philosophy could only be met by that gentleman with a remark that everything that is at all must begin at some time. Then tucking his wife's arm under his own, that she might not be left by herself to be troubled again, he descended to release Weg, who, being something drowsy after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased to stump away without doing what he had come to do, and was paid for doing." Mr. Buffon then put on his hat, and Mrs. Buffon her shawl, and the pair, further provided with a bunch of keys in a lighted lantern, went all over the dismal house, dismal everywhere, but in their own two rooms, from cellar to cockloft. Not resting satisfied with giving that much chase to Mrs. Buffon's fancies, they pursued them into the yard and outbuildings and under the mounds, and setting the lantern when all was done at the foot of one of the mounds, they comfortably trotted to and fro for an evening walk to the end that the murky cobwebs in Mrs. Buffon's brain might be blown away. "They're my dear," said Mr. Buffon, and they came in to supper. "That was the treatment, you see. Completely worked round, haven't you?" "Yes, dearie," said Mrs. Buffon, laying aside her shawl, "I'm not nervous anymore. I'm not a bit troubled now. I'll go anywhere about the house the same as ever, but," said Mr. Buffon, "but I've only to shut my eyes." "And what then?" "Why then?" said Mrs. Buffon, speaking with her eyes closed and her left hand thoughtfully touching her brow, "Then there they are, the old man's face, and it gets younger, the two children's faces, and they get older, a face that I don't know, and then all the faces." Opening her eyes again and seeing her husband's face across the table, she leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to supper, declaring it to be the best face in the world. End of Book 1 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Minders and Reminders The secretary lost no time in getting to work, and his vigilance and method soon set their mark on the Golden Dustman's affairs. His earnestness in determining to understand the length and breadth and depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer was as special as his dispatch in transacting it. He accepted no information or explanation at second hand, but made himself the master of everything confided to him. One part of the secretary's conduct, underlying all rest, might have been mistrusted by a man with a better knowledge of men than the Golden Dustman had. The secretary was as far from being inquisitive or intrusive as secretary could be, but nothing less than a complete understanding of the whole of the affairs would content him. It soon became apparent, from the knowledge with which he set out, that he must have been to the office where the harm and will was registered, and must have read the will. He anticipated Mr. Buffon's consideration whether he should be advised with on this or that topic by showing that he already knew of it and understood it. He did this with no attempted concealment, seeming to be satisfied that it was part of his duty to have prepared himself at all attainable points for its utmost discharge. This might, let it be repeated, have awakened some little vague mistrust in a man more worldly wise than the Golden Dustman. On the other hand, the secretary was discerning, discreet, and silent, though as zealous as if the affairs had been his own. He showed no love of patronage or the command of money, but distinctly preferred resigning both to Mr. Buffon. If, in his limited sphere, he sought power, it was the power of knowledge, the power derivable from a perfect comprehension of his business. As on the secretary's face, there was a nameless cloud, so on his manner there was a shadow equally indefinable. It was not that he was embarrassed, as on that first night with the wolf of family, he was habitually unembarrassed now, and yet the something remained. It was not that his manner was bad, as on that occasion, it was now very good as being modest, gracious and ready. Yet the something never left it. It has been written of men who have undergone a cruel captivity, or who have passed through a terrible strait, or who in self-preservation have killed a defenseless fellow creature, at the record thereof has never faded from their countenances until they died. Was there any such record here? He established a temporary office for himself in the new house, and all went well under his hand with one singular exception. He manifestly objected to communicate with Mr. Buffon's solicitor. Two or three times, when there was some slight occasion for his doing so, he transferred the task to Mr. Buffon, and his evasion of it soon became so curiously apparent that Mr. Buffon spoke to him on the subject of his reluctance. "It is so," the secretary admitted, "I would rather not." "Had he any personal objection to Mr. Lightwood?" "I don't know him." Had he suffered from lawsuits? "Not more than other men," was his short answer. "Was he prejudiced against the race of lawyers?" "No. But while I am in your employment, sir, I would rather be excused from going between the lawyer and the client. Of course, if you press it, Mr. Buffon, I am ready to comply, but I should take it as a great favour if you would not press it, without urgent occasion." Now, it could not be said that there was urgent occasion, for Lightwood retained no other affairs in his hands, and such are still lingered and languished about the undiscovered criminal, and such as arose out of the purchase of the house. Many other matters that might have travelled to him now stopped short at the secretary, under whose administration they were far more expeditiously and satisfactorily disposed of than they would have been if they had gotten to young Blight's domain. This the golden dustman quite understood. Even the matter immediately in hand was a very little moment as requiring personal appearance on the secretary's part for it amounted to no more than this. The death of Hexam, rendering the sweat of the honest man's brow unprofitable, the honest man had shufflingly declined to moisten his brow for nothing, with that severe exertion which is known in legal circles as swearing your way through a stone wall. Consequently, that new light had gone sputtering out. But the airing of the old facts had led someone concerned to suggest that it would be well before they were reconciled to their gloomy shelf. Now probably forever to induce or compel that Mr. Julius Hanford to reappear and be questioned. And all traces of Mr. Julius Hanford being lost, Lightwood now referred to his client for authority to seek him through public advertisement. "Gas your objection, go to writing, to Lightwood," wrote Smith. "Not in the least, sir. Then perhaps you write him a line, and say he is free to do what he likes. I don't think he promises. I don't think it promises," said the secretary. "Still, you may do what he likes." "I will write immediately. Let me thank you for so considerably yielding to my disinclination. It may seem less unreasonable if I avow to you that although I don't know Mr. Lightwood, I have a disagreeable association connected with him. It is not his fault. He's not at all to blame for it, and does not even know my name." Mr. Buffon dismissed the matter with a nod or two. The letter was written, and next day Mr. Julius Hanford was advertised for. He was requested to place himself in communication with Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, as a possible means of furthering the ends of justice, and a reward was offered to anyone acquainted with his whereabouts who would communicate the same to the said Mr. Mortimer Lightwood at his office in the temple. Every day for six weeks his advertisement appeared at the head of all newspapers, and every day for six weeks the secretary, when he saw it, said to himself in the tone in which he had said to his employer, "I don't think it promises." Among his first occupations, pursuit of that orphan wanted by Mrs. Buffon held a conspicuous place. From the earliest moment of his engagement he showed a particular desire to please her, and, knowing her to have this object at heart, he followed it up with unwearing alacrity and interest. Mr. and Mrs. Milvey had found their search a difficult one. Either an eligible orphan was of the wrong sex, which almost always happened, always too old, or too young, or too sickly, or too dirty, or too much accustomed to the streets, or too lightly to run away. Or it was found impossible to complete the philanthropic transaction without buying the orphan. For the instant it became known that anybody wanted the orphan, upstarted some affectionate relative of the orphan who put a price upon the orphan's head. The suddenness of an orphan's rise in the market was not to be paralleled by the maddest records of the stock exchange. He would be at five thousand percent discount, out at nurse making a mud pie at nine in the morning, and, being inquired for, would go up to five thousand percent premium before noon. The market was rigged in various artful ways. Count of its stock got into circulation. Parents boldly represented themselves as dead, and brought their orphans with them. Genuine orphan stock was surreptitiously withdrawn from the market. It being announced by emissaries posted for the purpose at Mr. and Mrs. Milvey were coming down the court. Orphan's script would be instantly concealed, and production refused, save on a condition usually stated by the brokers as a gallon of beer. Likewise, fluctuations of a wild and south sea nature were occasioned by orphan holders keeping back, and then rushing into the market a dozen together. But the uniform principle at the root of all these various operations was bargain and sale, and that principle could not be recognized by Mr. and Mrs. Milvey. At length tidings were received by the Reverend Frank of a charming orphan to be found at Brentford. One of the deceased parents, late his parishioners, had a poor widowed grandmother in that agreeable town, and she, Mrs. Betty Higdon, had carried off the orphan with maternal care, but could not afford to keep him. The secretary proposed to Mrs. Boughton either to go down himself and take a preliminary survey of this orphan, or to drive her down, that she might at once form her own opinion. Mrs. Boughton, preferring the latter course, they set off one morning in a hired fayton, conveying the hammer-headed young man behind him. The abode of Mrs. Betty Higdon was not easy to find, lying in such complicated back settlements of muddy Brentford, that they left their equipage at the sign of the three magpies, and went in search of it on foot. After many inquiries and defeats, there was pointed out to them in a lane a very small cottage residence, with a board across the open doorway hooked onto which board by the armpits was a young gentleman of tender years, angling for murder of the headless wooden horse and line. In this young sportsman, distinguished by a crispy, curling, orphaned head and a bluff countenance, the secretary described the orphan. It unfortunately happened as they quickened their pace, at the orphan, lost to considerations of personal safety in the ardour of the moment, overbalanced himself and toppled into the street. Being an orphan of a chubby confirmation, he then took to rolling, and had rolled into the gutter before they could come up. From the gutter he was rescued by John Rokesmith, and thus the first meeting that Mrs. Higdon was inaugurated by the awkward circumstance of their being in possession, one would say at first sight unlawful possession, of the orphan upside down and purple in the countenance. The board across the doorway too, acting as a trap equally for the feet of Mrs. Higdon coming out, and the feet of Mrs. Boffin and John Rokesmith going in, greatly increased the difficulty of the situation, to which the cries of the orphan impart a lugubrious and inhuman character. At first it was impossible to explain, an account of the orphans holding his breath, and most terrific proceeding, super-inducing in the orphan, lead-colour rigidity, and a deadly silence, compared with which his cries were music yielding the height of enjoyment. But as he gradually recovered, Mrs. Boffin gradually introduced herself, and smiling peace was gradually wooed back to Mrs. Betty Higdon's home. It was then perceived to be a small home, with a large mangle in it, at the handle of which machine stood a very long boy with a very little head, and an open mouth of disproportionate capacity that seemed to assist his eyes in staring at the visitors. In a corner below the mangle, on a couple of stools, sat two very little children, a boy and a girl, and when a very long boy, an interval of staring, took a turn at the mangle, it was alarming to see how it lunged itself of those two innocents, like a catapult, designed for their destruction, harmlessly retiring, but within an inch of their heads. The room was clean and neat; it had a brick floor and a window of diamond pains, and a flounce hanging below the chimney-piece; and strings nailed from bottom to top outside the window, on which scarlet beans were to grow in the coming season, if the fates were propitious. However propitious they might have been in the season that were gone, to Betty Higdon and the matter of beans they had not been very favourable in the matter of coins, for it was easy to see that she was poor. She was one of those old women, was Mrs. Betty Higdon, who, by dint of an indomitable purpose and a strong constitution, fight out many years, though each year has come with its new knock-down blows fresh to the fight against her, wearied by it, an active old woman with a bright dark eye and a resolute face, it quite a tender creature too, not a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads. "Yes, sure," said she, and the business was opened. Mrs. Milvey had the kindness to write to me, "Mom, and I got sloppy to read it. He was a pretty letter, but she's an affable lady." The visitors glanced at the long boy, who seemed to indicate by a broader stare of his mouth and eyes that in him sloppy stood confessed. "For I ain't, you must know," said Betty, "much of the end at reading, writing end, though I can read me Bible and most print, and I do love a newspaper. You mightn't think it, but sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. You do the police in different voices." The visitors again considered it a point of politeness to look at sloppy, who, looking at them, suddenly threw back his head, extended his mouth to its utmost width, and laughed, loud, and long. At this the two innocents, with their brains in that apparent danger, laughed, and Mrs. Higdon laughed, and the orphan laughed, and their visitors laughed, which was more cheerful than intelligible. Then sloppy, seeming to be seized with an industrious mania or fury, turned to at the mangle and impaled it at the heads of the innocents with such a creaking and rumbling, and Mrs. Higdon stopped him. The gentle folks can't hear themselves speak sloppy, bard a bit, bard a bit. "Is that the dear child in your lap?" said Mrs. Boffin. "Yes, ma'am. This is Johnny." "Johnny, too," cried Mrs. Boffin, turning to the secretary, "already, Johnny, only one of the two names left to give him. He's a pretty boy." With his chin tucked down in his shy, childish manner, he was looking furtively at Mrs. Boffin out of his blue eyes, and reaching his fat, dimple hand up to the lips of the old woman, who was kissing it by times. "Yes, ma'am. He's a pretty boy. He's a dear darling boy. He's the child of my own last-left daughter's daughter. But she's gone the way of all the rest. "Those are not his brother and sister," said Mrs. Boffin. "How, dear, now, ma'am. Those are minders." "Minders?" the secretary repeated. "Left to be minded, sir. I'll keep a mind in school. I can take only three on account of the mangle. But our love, children, and four months a week is four pence. Come here, tottles, and pottles." Todles was the pet name of the boy, pottles of the girl. At their little unsteady pace, they came across the floor, hand in hand, as if they were traversing an extremely difficult road intersected by brooks, and, when they had had their heads patted by Mrs. Higdon, made lunges at the orphan, dramatically representing an attempt to bear him, crowing into captivity and slavery. All the three children enjoyed this to a delightful extent, and the sympathetic sloppy again laughed long and loud. When it was discreet to stop the play, Betty Higdon said, "Goutier seats, tottles and pottles." And they returned, hand in hand, across country, seeming to find the brooks rather swollen by late rains. "And master, or mister, sloppy?" said the secretary, and doubt whether he was man, boy, or what. "A laugh-child," returned Betty Higdon, dropping her voice, "parents never known, found in the street." He was brought up in the—oh, with a shiver of repugnance. "The house?" "The poor house," said the secretary. Mrs. Higdon set that resolute old face of hers, and darkly nodded yes. "You dislike the mention of it?" "Just like the mention of it," answered the old woman, "kill me, sooner than take me there. Throw this pretty child under cart-horse's feet, and a loaded wagon, sooner than take him there. Come to us, and find us all a dying, and set alight to us all where we lie, and let us all blaze away with the house, into a heap of cinders, sooner than move a corpse of us there." A surprising spirit in this lonely woman, after so many years of hard-working, and hard-living, my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, what is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches? British independence, rather perverted? Is that, or something like it, the ring of the cant? "Do I never read in the newspapers," said the dame, funneling the child. "God help me, and they'll like me. Are the worn-out people that do come down to that, get driven from post to pillar, and pillet to post a purpose to tie them out? Do I never read? Are they a put-off, put-off, put-off? Are they all grudged, grudged, crudged, the shelter, or the doctor, or the drop of physic, or the bit of bread? Do I never read? How they grow hot, sick of it, and give it up, after having let themselves drop so low, and how they, after all, die out, for want of help?" Then I say, "I hope I can die as well as another, and I'll die without that disgrace." I absolutely impossible my lords and gentlemen honourable-borns, by any stretch of legislative wisdom to set these perverse people right in their logic. "Johnny, my pretty," continued old Betty, caressing the child and rather mourning over it and speaking to it. "Your old granny Betty, is now a four-score year than three-score and ten. She never begged, nor had a penny of the union money in all her life. She paid scot, and she paid lot, when she had that money to pay. She worked when she could, and she starved when she must. You pry that your granny may have strength enough left her at the last. She stung for an old one, Johnny, to get up from her bed, and run and hide herself and swallow the death in a hole, sooner than fall at the ends of those cruel jacks we read of. That dolgent drive and worry and weary scorned in shame, the decent poor." A brilliant success, my lords and gentlemen, and honourable-borns, to have brought it to this in the minds of the best of the poor. Under submission, might it be worth thinking of at any odd time? The fright and abhorrence that Mrs. Betty Higdon smoothed out of her strong face, as she ended this diversion, showed how seriously she had meant it. "And does he work for you?" asked the secretary, gently bringing the discourse back to Master or Mr. Sloppy. "Yes," said Betty, with a good humid smile and nod of the head, "and well, too." "Does he live here?" "He lives more here than anywhere. He was thought to be no better than a natural. A first camp and bee is a minder. I made interest with Mr. Blogg the Beedle, to have him as a minder, seen him by a chance up at church, and thinking I might do something with him, for he was a weak, rickety-creater then." "Is he called by his right name?" "Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he has no right name. I always understood he took his name, from being found on a sloppy night." "He seems a name, miable fellow." "Bless you, sir. He's not a bit of him," returned Betty, "that's not amiable. So you may judge how amiable he is by running your eye along his height." Of an ungainly make was sloppy. Too much of him long-wise, too little of him broad-wise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling, male, human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons. Every button he had about him, glaring at the public, to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow and wrist and ankle had sloppy, and he didn't know how to dispose of it to the best advantage, but was always investing it in wrong securities and so getting himself into embarrassed circumstances. Full private, number one, in the awkward squad of the rank and file of life was sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to the colours. "And now," said Mrs. Waffen, "concerning Johnny." As Johnny, with his chin tucked in and lips pouting, reclined in Betty's lap, concentrating his blue eyes on the visitors and shading them from observation with the dimpled arm. All Betty took one of his fresh, fat hands and her withered right, and fell to gently beating it on her withered left. "Yes, Mom. Concerning Johnny." "If you trust the dear child to me," said Mrs. Waffen, with the face and writing trust, "he shall have the best of homes, the best of care, the best of education, the best of friends. Please, God, I will be a true good mother to him." "I am thankful to you, Mom, and the dear child would be thankful if he was old enough to understand." Still lightly beating the little hand upon her own. "I wouldn't stand in the dear child's light, not if I had all me before me instead of a very little of it. But I hope you won't take it ill, that our cleave to the child closer than words can tell, for he's the last living thing left to me." "Take it ill, my dear soul. Is it likely, and you so tender of him, as to bring him home here?" "I have seen," said Betty, still with that light beat upon her hard rough hand. "So many of them are my lap, and they're all gone, but this one. I'm ashamed to seem so selfish, but I don't really mean it. He'll be the making of his fortune, and he'll be a gentleman when I'm dead. I don't know what comes over me. I try against it. Don't notice me." The light beat stopped. The resolute mouth gave way, and a fine, strong old face broke up into weakness and tears. "Now, greatly to the leaf of the visitors, the emotional sloppy, no sooner be held as patroness in this condition, and throwing back his head and throwing up in his mouth, he lifted up his voice and bellowed. This alarming note of something wrong instantly terrified todles and puddles, who were no sooner heard to roar of surprisingly than Johnny, curving himself the wrong way and striking out at Mrs. Bluffin with a pair of indifferent shoes, became a prey to despair. The absurdity of the situation put its pathos to the route. Mrs. Betty Higdon was herself in a moment, and brought them all to order with that speed, a sloppy, stopping short and a polysyllabic bellow, transferred his energy to the mango, and had taken several penitential turns before he could be stopped. "They, they, they," said Mrs. Bluffin, almost regarding her kind self as the most ruthless of women. "Nothing is going to be done. Nobody need be frightened. We're all comfortable. I ain't we, Mrs. Higdon?" "Sure, and certain we are," returned Betty. "And there is really no hurry, you know," said Mrs. Bluffin in a lower voice. "Take time to think of it, my good creature." "Tell you fear me, no more, ma'am," said Betty. "I thought of it for good yesterday. I don't know what come up for me just now, but you'll never come again." "Well, then, Johnny shall have more time to think of it," returned Mrs. Bluffin. "The pretty child shall have time to get used to it, and you'll get him more used to it if you think well of it, won't you?" Betty understood that, cheerfully and readily. "Law," cried Mrs. Bluffin, cooking radently upon her, "we want to make everybody happy, not too small, and perhaps you wouldn't mind that they may know how used to it you begin to get, and how it all goes on." "Well," said Sloppy," said Mrs. Higdon. "And this gentleman who has come with me will pay him for his trouble," said Mrs. Bluffin. "And Mr. Sloppy, whenever you count in my house, be sure you never go away without having had a good dinner of meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding." This still further brightened the face of affairs. For the highly sympathetic sloppy, first broadly staring and grinning, and then roaring with laughter, toddlers and puddles followed suit, and Johnny chomped the trick. T&P, considering these favorable circumstances for the resumption of that dramatic descent upon Johnny, again came across country hand in hand upon a buckeneering expedition. And this, having been fought out in the chimney corner behind Mrs. Higdon's chair, with great valor on both sides, those desperate pirates returned hand in hand to their stools across the dry bed of a mountain torrent. "You must tell me what I can do for you, Betty, my friend," said Mrs. Bluffin, confidentially, "if not today, next time." "Thank you all the same, ma'am, but I want nothing for myself. I can work, I'm strong, I can walk to it the mile if I'm put to it," old Betty was proud, and said it with a sparkle in her bright eyes. "Yes, but there are some little comforts that you wouldn't be the worst for," returned Mrs. Bluffin. "Bless, he, I wasn't born a lady any more than you." "It seems to me," said Betty, smiling, "that you were born a lady, and a true one, or there never was a lady born. But I couldn't take anything from you, my dear. I never did take anything from anyone. It ain't that I'm not grateful, but I love to own it better." "Well, well," returned Mrs. Bluffin, "I have misspoke of little things, or I want to take in the liberty." Betty put her visitor's hand to her lips, an acknowledgement of the delicate answer. Wonderfully upright her figure was, and Wonderfully self-reliant her look, as, standing facing her visitor, she explained herself further. "If I could have kept the dear child, without the dread that's always upon me, of his coming to that fate I've spoken of, I could never have parted with him, even to you. For I love him. I love him. I love him. I love my husband's long dead and gone in him. I love my children dead and gone in him. I love my young, and hopeful day is dead and gone in him. I couldn't sell that love, and look you in your bright kind face. It's a free gift. I am in want of nothing. When my strength tells me, if I can but die out, quick and quiet, I shall be quite content. I have stood between my dead and that shame I have spoken of, and is being kept off from every one of them, sold in my gown. With her hand upon her breast, he's just enough to lay me in the grave. I only see that it's rightly spent, so as I may rest free to the last from that cruelty and disgrace, and you'll have done much more than a little thing for me, and all that is in this present world, my art is set upon." Mrs. Betty Higdon's visitor pressed her hand. There was no more breaking up of this strong old face and a weakness. My lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, it really was as composed as our own faces, and almost as dignified. And now, Johnny was to be enweagled into occupying a temporary position on Mrs. Buffon's lap. It was not until he had been piqued to competition, with two diminutive minders by seeing them successively raised to that post and retire from it without injury, that it could be by any means induced to leave Mrs. Betty Higdon's skirts, towards which she exhibited even when Mrs. Buffon's embrace, strong yearnings, spiritual and bodily, the former expressed in a very gloomy visage, the latter in extended arms. However, a general description of the toy wonders lurking in Mr. Buffon's house so far conciliated this worldly-minded orphan as to induce him to stare at her frowningly with the fist in his mouth and even length to chuckle when a richly-comparastened horse on wheels with a miraculous gift of cantoring to cake-shops was mentioned. This sound being taken up by the minders swelled into a rapturous trio which gave general satisfaction. So the interview was considered very successful, and Mrs. Buffon was pleased and all were satisfied, not least of all sloppy, who undertook to conduct the visitors back by the best way to the three magpies and whom the hammer-headed young man butch despised. This piece of business thus put in train, the secretary drove Mrs. Buffon back to the bower and found employment for himself at the new house until evening. Whether when evening came he took away to his lodgings that led through fields, with any design of finding him a speller-wulfur in those fields, is not so certain as that she regularly walked there at that hour. And moreover it is certain that there she was. No longer in mourning was Bella was dressed in as pretty colors as she could muster. There was no denying that she was as pretty as they, and that she and the colors went very prettily together. She was reading as she walked, and of course it is to be inferred from her showing no knowledge of Mr. Rokesmith's approach, that she did not know he was approaching. "A," said Miss Bella, raising her eyes from her book when he stopped before her. "Oh, it hits you." "Only I, a fine evening." "Is it?" said Bella, looking coldly round. "I suppose it is, now you mention it. I have not been thinking of the evening." "So intent upon your book?" "Yes," replied Bella, with a draw of indifference. "Uh, love story, Miss Wilfer." "Oh, dear, no, or I shouldn't be reading it. It's more about money than anything else." "And does it say that money is better than anything?" "Upon my word," returned Bella, "I forget what it says, but you can find out for yourself if you like, Mr. Rokesmith. I don't want it anymore." The secretary took the book. She had flattered the leaves as if it were a fan, and walked beside her. "I am charged with a message for you, Miss Wilfer." "Impossible, I think?" said Bella, with another draw. "From Mrs. Boffin. She desired me to assure you of the pleasure she has, in finding that you will be ready to receive you in another week or two at farthest." Bella turned her head towards him, with her bitterly insolent eyebrows raised, and her eyelids dripping, as much as to say, "How did you come by the message pray?" "I have been waiting for an opportunity of telling you that I am Mr. Boffin's secretary." "I am as wise as ever," said Miss Bella loftily, "but I don't know what a secretary is, not that it signifies—not at all." A covert glance at her face, as he walked beside her, showed him that she had not expected his ready assent to that proposition. "Then are you going to be always there, Mr. Rook-Smith?" she inquired, as if that would be a drawback. "Always—no—very much there—yes." "Dear me," drawed Bella in a tone of mortification, "but my position there as secretary will be very different from yours as guest. You will know little or nothing about me. I shall transact the business. You will transact the pleasure. I shall have my salary to earn. You will have nothing to do, but to enjoy and attract." "Attract, sir?" said Bella again, with her eyebrows raised and her eyelids drooping. "I don't understand you." Without replying on this point, Mr. Rook-Smith went on. "Excuse me. When I first saw you in your black dress." "There!" was Miss Bella's mental exclamation. "What did I say to them at home? Everybody noticed that ridiculous morning." "When I first saw you in your black dress, I was at a loss to account for that distinction between yourself and your family. I hope it was not impertinent to speculate upon it." "I hope not, I am sure," said Miss Bella, hortily, "but you ought to know best how you speculated upon it." Mr. Rook-Smith inclined his head in a deprecatory manner and went on. "Since I have been entrusted with Mr. Boffin's affairs, I have necessarily come to understand the little mystery. I venture to remark that I feel persuaded that much of your loss may be repaired. I speak, of course, merely of wealth, Miss Wilfer. The loss of a perfect stranger, whose worth or worthlessness I cannot estimate, nor you either, is beside the question. But this excellent gentleman, lady, are so full of simplicity, so full of generosity, so inclined towards you, and so desirous to—how shall I express it—to make amends, for their good fortune, that you have only to respond." As he watched her with another covert look, he saw a certain ambitious triumph in her face, which no assumed coldness could conceal. As we have been brought under one roof by an accidental combination of circumstances which oddly extend itself to the new relations before us, I have taken the liberty of saying these few words. You don't consider them intrusive, I hope, said the Secretary, with deference. "Really, Mr. Rooksmith? I can't say what I consider them," returned the young lady. "They are perfectly new to me, and may be found at all together, on your own imagination." "You will see." These same fields were opposite to the Wilfer premises. The discreet Mrs. Wilfer now looking out of window and beholding her daughter in conference with her lodger, instantly tied up her head and came out for a casual walk. "I have been telling Miss Wilfer," said John Rooksmith, as the majestic lady came stalking up, "that I have become by a curious chance, Mr. Boughton's secretary or man of business." "I have not," returned Mrs. Wilfer, waving her gloves in her chronic state of dignity and vague ill usage, "the honour of any intimate acquaintance with Mr. Boughton, and it is not for me to congratulate that gentleman on the acquisition he has made." "A poor one enough," said Rooksmith. "And finally," returned Mrs. Wilfer, "the merits of Mr. Boughton may be highly distinguished, may be more distinguished than the countenance of Mrs. Boughton would imply, but it were the insanity of humility to deem him worthy of a better assistant." "You are very good. I have also been telling Miss Wilfer that she is expected very shortly at the new residence in town." "Having tacitly consented," said Mrs. Wilfer, with a grand shrug of her shoulders and another wave of her gloves, "to my child's acceptance of the profit attentions of Mrs. Boughton I interpose no objection." "Here, Miss Beller," offered the reminestrons, "don't talk nonsense, ma, please, peace," said Mrs. Wilfer. "No, ma, I'm not going to be made absurd, interposing objections." "I say," repeated Mrs. Wilfer, with the vast access of grandeur, "that I am not going to interpose objections of Mrs. Boughton to whose countenance no disciple of liver-tur could possibly for a single moment subscribe." With a shiver. "Seeks to illuminate her new residence in town with the attractions of a child of mine, I am content that you should be favoured by the company of a child of mine." "You use the word, ma'am. I have myself used," said Rooksmith, with a glance at Beller, "when you speak of Miss Wilfer's attractions there." "Pardon me," returned Mrs. Wilfer, with dreadful solemnity, "but I had not finished." "Oh, pray, excuse me." "I was about to say," pursued Mrs. Wilfer, who clearly had not had the faintest idea of saying anything more, "that when I use the term attractions I do so with the qualification that I do not mean it in any way whatever." The excellent lady delivered this loomous elucidation of her views with an air of greatly obliging her heroes, and greatly distinguishing herself. Where at Miss Beller laughed, a scorned little laugh, and said, "Quite enough about this, I am sure, on all sides. Have the goodness, Mr. Rooksmith, to give my love to Mrs. Boughton." "Pardon me," cried Mrs. Wilfer, "complements." "Love," repeated Beller, with a little stamp of her foot, "new," said Mrs. Wilfer, wherenotnously, "complements." "See," Miss Wilfer's love, and Mrs. Wilfer's complements, the secretary proposed, as a compromise. "And I shall be very glad to come when she is ready for me, the sooner the better." "One last word, Beller," said Mrs. Wilfer. "Before descending to the family apartment, I trust that as a child of mine you will ever be sensible that it will be graceful in you when associating with Mr. and Mrs. Boughton upon equal terms to remember that the secretary, Mr. Rooksmith, as your father's lodger, has a claim on your good word." The condescension with which Mrs. Wilfer delivered this proclamation of patronage was as wonderful as the swiftness of which the lodger had lost cast in the secretary. He smiled as the mother retired downstairs, but his face fell as the daughter followed. "So insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn," he said bitterly, and added as he went upstairs, "and yet so pretty, so pretty." And added presently, as he walked to and fro in his room, "and if she knew." She knew that he was shaking the house by his walking to and fro, and she declared it another of the miseries of being poor that you couldn't get rid of a haunting secretary stump, stump, stumping overhead in the dark, like a ghost. End of book 1, chapter 16, chapter 17, a dismal swamp. And now, in the blooming summer days, behold Mr. and Mrs. Boffin established in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, and behold all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures attracted by the gold dust of the gold endustment. For most among those leaving cards at the eminently aristocratic door, before it is quite painted, are the veneerings, out of breath, one might imagine, from the impetuosity of their rush to the eminently aristocratic steps. One copper plate, Mrs. Veneering, two copper plate, Mr. Veneerings, and a canubial copper plate, Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, requesting the honor of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's company at dinner with the utmost analytical solemnities. The enchanting lady Tippins leaves a card. Tremlow leaves cards. A tall custard-coloured faiton, tooling up in a solemn manner, leaves four cards, to wit a couple of Mr. Podsnaps, a Mrs. Podsnap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter leave cards. Sometimes the world's wife has so many daughters that her card reads rather like a miscellaneous lot at an auction, comprising Mrs. Tapkins, Miss Tapkins, Mr. Federica Tapkins, Miss Antonina Tapkins, Miss Malvena Tapkins, and Miss Ufemia Tapkins. At the same time, the same lady leaves the card of Mrs. Henry George Alfred Swashall, Nee Tapkins. Also, a card, Mrs. Tapkins at home, Wednesdays, music, Portland Place. Miss Bella Wilfer becomes an inmate for an indefinite period of the eminently aristocratic dwelling. Mrs. Buffon bears Miss Bella away to her melanos and dressmakers, and she gets beautifully dressed. The veneerings find with swift remorse that they have omitted to invite Miss Bella Wilfer. One Mrs. Veneering, and one Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, requesting that additional honor, instantly do penance in white cardboard on the hall table. Mrs. Tapkins likewise discovers her omission, and with promptitude repairs it. For herself, for Miss Tapkins, for Miss Federica Tapkins, for Miss Antonina Tapkins, for Miss Malvena Tapkins, and for Miss Ufemia Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs. Henry George Alfred Swashall, Nee Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs. Tapkins at home, Wednesdays, music, Portland Place. Trademan's Books Hunger and Trademan's Mouth's Water for the Gold Dust of the Golden Dustman. As Mrs. Buffon and Miss Wilfer drive out, or as Mr. Buffon walks out at his jog-truck pace, the fishmonger pulls off his hat with an air of reverence bounded on conviction. His men cleanse their fingers on their woolen aprons before presuming to touch their foreheads to Mr. Buffon or Lady. The gaping salmon and the golden mullet lying on the slab seem to turn up their eyes sideways as they would turn up their hands if they had any in worshipping admiration. The butcher, though a portly and a prosperous man, doesn't know what to do with himself, so anxious is he to express humility when discovered by the passing buffens taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents are made to the Buffon servants, and bland strangers with business cards meeting said servants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. As, supposing I was to be favored with an order from Mr. Buffon, my dear friend, it would be worth my while to do a certain thing that I hope might not prove wholly disagreeable to your feelings. But no one knows so well as the secretary, who opens and reads the letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety. Oh, the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the gold dust of the golden dustman. Fifty-seven churches to be erected, with half-crowns, forty-two-passenage houses to be repaired with shillings, seven and twenty organs to be built with happens, twelve-hundred children to be brought up on postage stamps. Not that a half a crown, shilling, hapony or postage stamp, would be particularly acceptable for Mr. Buffon, but that it is so obvious he is the man to make up the deficiency. And then the charities, my Christian brother. And mostly in difficulties, yet mostly lavish to, in the expensive articles of print and paper, large, fat, private, double letter sealed with a ducal coronet, Nicodemus Buffon Esquire, my dear sir, having consented to preside at the forthcoming annual dinner of the Family Party Fund, and feeling deeply impressed with the immense usefulness of that noble institution, and the great importance of its being supported by a list of stewards, that shall prove to the public the interest taken in it by popular and distinguished men. I have undertaken to ask you to become a steward on that occasion. So, listening your favourable reply before the fourteenth instant, I am, my dear sir, your faithful servant, Linseed. P.S., the steward's fee is limited to three guineas. Friendly this, on the part of the Duke of Linseed, and thoughtful in the postscript, only lithograph to buy the hundred, and presenting but a pale individuality of an address to Nicodemus Buffon Esquire, in quite another hand. It takes two noble ills, and if I count, combined, to inform Nicodemus Buffon Esquire in an equally flattering manner that an estimable lady in the west of England has offered to present a purse containing twenty pounds to the society for granting annuities to unassuming members of the middle classes, if twenty individuals will previously present purses of one hundred pounds each. And those benevolent noblemen, very kindly point out, that if Nicodemus Buffon Esquire should wish to present two or more purses, it will not be inconsistent with the design of the estimable lady in the west of England, provided each purse be coupled with the name of some member of his honoured and respected family. These are the corporate beggars, but there are, besides, the individual beggars, and how does the heart of the secretary fail him when he has to cope with them? And they must be coped with, to some extent, because they all enclose documents. They call their scraps documents, but they are, as to papers deserving the name, what minced veal is to a calf. The non-return of which would be their ruin. That is to say, they are utterly ruined now, but they would be more utterly ruined then. Among these correspondence are several daughters of general officers, long accustomed to every luxury of life, except spelling, who little thought, when their gallant fathers waged war in the peninsula, that they would ever have to appeal to those whom providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untold gold, and from among whom they select the name of Nicodemus Bophan Esquire, for a maiden effort in this wise understanding that he has such a heart as never was. The secretary learns, too, that confidence between man and wife would seem to obtain, but rarely, when virtue is in distress. So numerous are the wives who take up their pens, to ask Mr. Bophan for money without the knowledge of their devoted husbands, who would never permit it, while, on the other hand, so numerous other husbands who take up their pens to ask Mr. Bophan for money without the knowledge of their devoted wives, who would instantly go out of their senses, if they had the least suspicion of the circumstance. There are the inspired beggars, too. These were sitting only yesterday evening, musing over a fragment of candle which must soon go out and leave them in the dark for the rest of their nights, when surely some angel whispered the name of Nicodemus Bophan Esquire to their souls, imparting rays of hope, nay, confidence, to which they had long been strangers. Akin to these are the suggestively befriended beggars. They were partaking of a cold potato and water by the flickering and gloomy light of elusive a-match in their lodgings, wrench considerably in a rear and heartless land-lady, threatening expulsion like a dog into the streets, when a gifted friend happening to look in said, "Write immediately to Nicodemus Bophan Esquire, and would take no denial." There are the nobly independent beggars, too. These, in the days of their abundance, ever regarded gold as dross, and have not yet got over that only impediment in the way of their amassing wealth. But they want no dross from Nicodemus Bophan Esquire, "No, Mr. Bophan, the world may term it pride, poultry pride if you will, but they wouldn't take it if you offered it." "Alone, sir, for fourteen weeks of the day, interest calculated at the rate of five percent per annum, to be bestowed upon any charitable institution you may name, is all they want of you, and if you have the meanness to refuse it, count on being despised by these great spirits." There are the beggars of punctual business habits, too. These will make an end of themselves, at a quarter to one p.m. on Tuesday, if no post office order is in the interim received from Nicodemus Bophan Esquire. Arriving after a quarter to one p.m. on Tuesday, it need not be sent, as they will then, having made an exact memorandum of the heartless circumstances, be cold in death. There are the beggars on horseback, too, in another sense from the sense of the proverb. These are mounted and ready to start on the highway to affluence. The goal was before them. The road is in the best condition, their spurs are on, the steed is willing, but, at the last moment, for want of some special thing, a clock, a violin, an astronomical telescope, an electrifying machine, they must dismount forever, unless they receive its equivalent and money from Nicodemus Bophan Esquire. Less given to detail are the beggars who make sporting ventures. These usually to be addressed in reply under initials at a country post office, inquire in feminine hands, dare one who cannot disclose herself to Nicodemus Bophan Esquire, but whose name might startle him were it revealed, solicit the immediate advance of two hundred pounds from unexpected riches, exercising their noblest privilege in the trust of a common humanity. In such a dismal swamp does the new house stand, and through it does the secretary daily struggle breast high. Not to mention all the people alive who have made inventions that won't act, and all the jobbers who job in all the jobberies jobbed, though these may be regarded as the alligators of the dismal swamp, and are always lying by to drag the golden dustman under. But the old house, there are no designs against the golden dustman there, there are no fish of the shark-time in the bow waters. Perhaps not. Still, Meg is established there, and would seem, judged by his secret proceedings, to cherish a notion of making a discovery. For when a man with a wooden leg lies prone on his stomach to peep under bedsteads, and hops up ladders like some extinct bird to survey the tops of presses and cupboards, and provides himself an iron rod which he is always poking and prodding into dust mounds, the probability is that he expects to find something. End of Book I Chapter 17 Chapter 1 of an educational character The school at which young Charlie Hexham had first learned from a book, the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the greater preparatory establishment in which very much that is never unlearned, is learned without and before book, was a miserable loft in an unsavory yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable. It was crowded, noisy, and confusing. Half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction. The other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a rudour sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours. It was the school for all ages and for both sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were petitioned off into square assortments. But all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretense that every pupil was childish and innocent. This pretense much favoured by the lady visitors led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women, old and the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the good child's book, The Adventures of Little Marjorie, who resided in the village cottage by the mill, severely reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty. Divided her porridge with singing birds, denied herself a new nanking bonnet, on the ground of the turnips did not wear nanking bonnets, neither did the sheep who ate them, who platted straw and delivered the dreary extorations to all comers at all sorts of unseasonable times. So unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlocks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Tuppence, who, having resolved not to rob, under circumstances of uncommon atrocity, his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteen pence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterwards. Note that the benefactor came to know good. Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain. It always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons, that you were to do good, not because it was good, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrary wise, the adult pupils were taught to read, if they could learn, out of the New Testament, and my dint of stumbling over the syllables, and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of the sublime history, as if they had never seen or heard of it. And exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact, where black spirits and grey, red spirits and white jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled every night, and particularly every Sunday night. For then, an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, who nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when and where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their wretched faces. Sometimes with one hand, as if you were anointing them for a whisker, sometimes with both hands applied out of the fashion of blinkers. And so the jumble would be an action in this department for a mortal hour. The exponent dawling on to my dearer to childer verner, let us say, for example, about the beautiful coming to the sepulcher and repeating the word sepulcher, commonly used among infants, five hundred times, and never once hinting what it meant. The conventional boy smoothing away right and left as an infallible commentary. The whole hotbed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping cough, fever, and stomach disorders as if they were assembled in high market for the purpose. Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy, exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and having learnt it, could impart it much better than the teachers, as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood towards the shrewd of pupils. In this way, it had come about that Charlie Hexham had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school. So, you want to go and see your sister Hexham? If you please, Mr. Headstone? I have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live? Why, she's not settled yet, Mr. Headstone. I'd rather you didn't see her till she is settled, if it was all assigned to you. Look here, Hexham. Mr. Bradley Headstone, highly certificated, stapendurious schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one of the buttonholes of the boy's coat, and looked at it attentively. I hope your sister may be a good company for you. Why, do you doubt it, Mr. Headstone? I did not say, I doubted it. No, sir, you didn't say so. Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the buttonhole, and looked at it closer, bit the side of it, and looked at it again. You see, Hexham, you will be one of us. In good time, you are sure to pass a credible examination, and become one of us. Then the question is, the boy waited so long for the question, while the schoolmaster looked at a new side of his finger, and bit it, and looked at it again, that at length the boy repeated, "The question is, sir." Whether you had not better leave well alone, is it well to leave our sister alone, Mr. Headstone? I do not say so, because I do not know. I put it to you. I ask you to think of it. I want you to consider. You know how well you are doing here. After all, she got me here," said the boy, with a struggle, perceiving the necessity of it. Hackwise the schoolmaster, and making up her mind fully to the separation. Yes. The boy, with the return of that former reluctance, or struggle, or whatever it was, seemed to debate with himself. But lengthy said, raising his eyes to the master's face, "Ah, I wish you'd come with me and see her, Mr. Headstone. Though she is not settled. I wish you'd come with me and take her in the wrath and get you for yourself." "You are sure you would not like," asked the schoolmaster, "to prepare her." "My, my sister Lizzie," said the boy proudly, "what's now preparing, Mr. Headstone? What she is, she is, and chose herself to be. There's no pretending of her, my sister." His confidence in her sat more easily upon him than the indecision with which he had twice contended. It was his better nature to be true to her, if it were his worst nature to be wholly selfish, and as yet the better nature had the stronger hold. "Well, I can spare the evening," said the schoolmaster, "I am ready to walk with you." "Thank you, Mr. Headstone, and I am ready to go." Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six and twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired, mechanically, a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing its sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical storage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers, history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left, natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and whatnot, all in their several places. This care had imparted to his countenance a look of care. While the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one of lying in wait. It was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect, that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy as to anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself. Suppression of so much to make room for so much had given him a constrained manner over and above. Yet there was enough of what was animal, and of what was fiery, though smoldering, still visible in him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a pauper lad, had chance to be told off for the sea, he would not have been the last man in a ship's crew. Regarding that origin of his, he was proud, moody, and sullen, desiring it to be forgotten, and few people knew of it. In some visits to the jumble, his attention had been attracted to this boy, Hexam. An undeniable boy for a pupil teacher, an undeniable boy to do credit to the master who should bring him on. Combined with this consideration, there may have been some thought of the pauper lad now never to be mentioned. Be that how it might, he had with pains gradually worked the boy into his own school, and procured him some officers to discharge there, which were repaid with food and lodging. Such were the circumstances that had brought together Bradley Headstone and young Charlie Hexam at Autumn Evening. Autumn, because full half a year had come and gone, since the bird of prey lay dead upon the river shore. The schools, for they were twofold, as the sexes, were down in that district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent and Surrey meet, and where the railway still bestried the market gardens that will soon die under them. The schools were newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy neighbourhood, taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly incoherent mind, and set up anyhow. Here one side of a new street, there a large solitary public house facing nowhere, here another unfinished street already in ruins, there a church, here an immense new warehouse, there a dilapidated old country villa, then a medley of black ditch, sparkling cucumber frame, rank field, richly cultivated kitchen garden, brick viaduct, archspand canal, and disorder of frowsiness and fog, as if the child had given the table a kick and gone to sleep. But, even among school buildings, school teachers and school pupils, all according to pattern, and all engendered in the light of the latest gospel according to monotony, the old pattern into which so many fortunes have been shaped for good and evil comes out. It came out in Miss Peter, the schoolmistress, watching her flowers as Mr. Badley Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peter, the schoolmistress, watching the flowers and the little dusty bit of garden attached to her small official residence with little windows like the eyes and needles, and little doors like the covers of school books. Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxam was Miss Peter, cherry-cheeked, and tuneful of voice, a little pin cushion, a little housewife, a little book, a little work-box, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr. Badley Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a slate long, but would certainly have replied yes, for she loved him. The decent hair guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent silver watch was an object of envy to her, so would Miss Peter have gone round his neck and taken care of him, of him insensible, because he did not love Miss Peter. Miss Peter's favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little household, was in attendance with the can of water to replenish her little watering pot, and sufficiently divine the state of Miss Peter's affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young Charlie Hexam. So there was a double palpitation among the double stocks and double wallflowers, when the master and the boy looked over the little gate. "A fine evening, Miss Peter," said the master. "A very fine evening, Mr. Headstone," said Miss Peter, "are you taking a walk?" Hexam and I are going to take a long walk. "Charming weather," remarked Miss Peter. "For a long walk." "Ours is rather unbusiness than mere pleasure," said the master. Miss Peter inverting her watering pot and very carefully shaking out the few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue in them, which would make it a jacks beanstalk before morning, called for replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy. "Good night, Miss Peter," said the master. "Good night, Mr. Headstone," said the mistress. "The pupil had been in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the class custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus, whenever she found she had an observation on him to offer to Miss Peter, that she often did it in their domestic relations, and she did it now." "Well, Mary Anne," said Miss Peter, "if you please, Mom," Hexam said they were going to see his sister. "But that can't be, I think," returned Miss Peter, "because Mr. Headstone can have no business with her." Mary Anne again hailed. "Well, Mary Anne," "if you please, Mom, perhaps it's Hexam's business." "That may be," said Miss Peter, "I didn't think of that, not that it matters at all." "Mary Anne again hailed." "Well, Mary Anne." "They say she's very handsome." "Oh, Mary Anne, Mary Anne," returned Miss Peter, slightly coloring and shaking her head a little out of humour. "How often have I told you not to use that vague expression, not to speak in that general way? When you say they say, what do you mean, part of speech they?" Mary Anne hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand as being under examination and replied. "Person or pronoun? Person day? Third person? Number day?" Plural number. "Then how many do you mean, Mary Anne?" "Two or more." "Ah, peck your pardon, Mom," said Mary Anne, disconcerted now she came to think of it. "But I don't know that I mean more than her brother himself," as she said it she unhooked her arm. "I felt convinced of it," returned Miss Peter, smiling again. "Now pray, Mary Anne, be careful another time. He says, is very different from they say, remember? Difference between he says, and they say, give it me." Mary Anne immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand and attitude absolutely necessary to the situation and replied, "One is indicative mode, present tense, third person, singular, verb active to say, other is indicative mood, present tense, third person, plural, verb active to say." "Why verb active, Mary Anne?" "Because it takes a pronoun after it in the objective case," Miss Peter. "Very good indeed," remarked Miss Peter with encouragement. "In fact, could not be better. Don't forget to apply it another time, Mary Anne." This said Miss Peter finished the watering of her flowers and went into a little official residence and took a refresher of the principal rivers and mountains of the world, their breaths, depths, and heights before settling the measurements of the body of address for her own personal occupation. Bradley Headstone and Charlie Hexham duly got to the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge and crossed the bridge and made along the Middlesex shore towards Milbank. In this region are a certain little street called Church Street and a certain little blind square called Smith Square, in the centre of which Lasterteed is a very hideous church with four towers at the four corners, generally resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air. They found a tree nearby in a corner and a blacksmith's forge and a timber yard and a dealer's in old iron. What a rusty portion of a boiler and a great iron wheel or so, meant by lying half buried in the dealer's forecourt, nobody seemed to know what he wanted to know. Like the miller, a questionable jollity in the song, they cared for nobody, no not they, and nobody cared for them. After making the round of this place and noting that there was a deadly kind of repose on it, more as though it had taken Lordnham and fallen into a natural rest, they stopped at the point where the street and the square joined and where there were some little quiet houses in a row, till these Charlie Hexham finally led the way and at one of these stopped. "This must be where my sister lives, sir. This is where she came for a temporary lodging soon after father's death." "How often have you seen her since?" "Why, only twice, sir," returned the boy with his former reluctance, "but that's as much her doing as mine." "How does she support herself?" "She was always a fair needlewoman and she keeps the stockroom of her seaman's outfitter." "Does she ever work at her own lodging here?" "Sometimes, by her regular hours and regular occupation or at their place of business, I believe, sir. This is her number." The boy knocked at a door, and the door promptly opened with a spring and a click. A parlour door within a small entry stood open and disclosed a child, a dwarf, a girl, or something, sitting on a little low old-fashioned armchair which had a kind of little working bench before it. "I can't get up," said the child, "because my back spared and my legs are queer, but I'm the person of the house." "Who else is at home?" asked Charlie Hexam, staring. "Nobody's at home at present," returned the child with a glib assertion of her dignity, "except the person of the house. What did you want, young men?" "Ah, what a slimmer, sister. Many young men have sisters," returned the child, "give me your name, young men." The queer little figure and the queer but not ugly little face with its bright grey eyes were so sharp that the sharpness of the men are seemed unavoidable, as if, being turned out of that mould, it must be sharp. "Hexam is my name." "Ah, indeed," said the person of the house, "I thought it might be. Your sister will be in in about a quarter of an hour. I'm very fond of your sister. She's my particular friend. Take a seat. And this gentleman's name?" "Mr. Edstown, my schoolmaster. Take a seat. And would you please just shut the street door first? I can't very well do it myself, because my back's so bad and my legs are so queer." They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its work of gumming or gluing together with a camel's hairbrush, certain pieces of cardboard and thin wood previously cut into various shapes. The scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child herself had cut them, and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon also strewn upon the bench showed that when Julie stuffed and stuffing too was there, she was to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble fingers was remarkable, and as she brought two thin edges accurately together by giving them a little bite, she would glance at the visitors out of the corners of her grey eyes with a look that out sharpened all her other sharpness. "You can't tell me the name of my trade, I'll be bound," she said, after taking several of these observations. "You make pink cushions," said Charlie. "What else do I make?" "The pen wipers," said Badly Edstown. "What else do I make? You're a schoolmaster, but you can't tell me." "You do something," he returned, pointing to a corner little bench, with straw, but I don't know what. "Well done, you," cried the person of the house. "I only make pink cushions and pen wipers to use up my waist, but my straw really does belong to my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?" "Dinnermatts," a schoolmaster, and says "Dinnermatts. I'll give you a clue to my trade in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a bee, because she's beautiful. I hate my love with a bee, because she's brazen. I took her to the sign of the blue boar, and I cheated her with her bonnets. Her name is bouncer, and she lives in bedlam. Now, what do I make with my straw?" "That lady's bonnets." "Fine, ladies," said the person of the house, nodding ascent. "Dolls! I'm a doll's dressmaker." "I hope it's a good business." The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. "Now poorly paid, and I'm often so pressed for time. I had a doll married last week, and was obliged to work all night, and it's not good for me, on account of my back being so bare to my leg so queer." They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish, and the schoolmaster said, "I'm sorry, or fine, ladies, are so inconsiderate." "It's the way with them," said the person of the house, shrugging her shoulders again. "And they take no care of their clothes, and they never keep to the same fashions a month. I'll work for a doll with three daughters. Bless you, she's enough to ruin her husband." The person of the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them another look out of the corners of her eyes. She had an elf in chin that was capable of great expression, and whenever she gave this look she hitched this chin up, as if her eyes and her chin worked together on the same wires. "Are you always as busy as you are now?" "Bizia! I'm slept just now. I finished a large morning order the day before yesterday. Doll I worked for, lost a canary bird." The person of the house gave another little laugh, and then nodded her head several times, as who should moralize, "Oh, this world, this world." "Are you alone all day?" asked Badly Headstone. "Don't any of the neighbouring children." "Ah, lad!" cried the person of the house of the little scream, as if the word had pricked her. "Don't talk with children. I can't bear children. I know their tricks and their manners." She said this with an angry little shake of a tight fist close before her eyes. Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher habit to perceive that the doll's dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between herself and other children, but both master and pupil understood it so. "Always, running about and screeching, always playing and fighting, always skipping, skipping on the pavement and talking it for their games. Oh, I know their tricks and their manners." Shaking the little fist as before. "And that's not all. It was so often calling names in through a person's keyhole and imitating a person's back and legs. Oh, I know their tricks and their manners, and I'll tell you what a door to punish them. These doors enter the church in the square, black doors leading into black faults. Well, I'd open one of those doors and I'd cram them all in, and then I'd lock the door and suit the keyhole, I'd blow in pepper." "What good! I'll be the good of blowing in pepper!" asked Charlie Hexham. "To set them sneezing," said the person at the house, "and make their eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I'd mock them to the keyhole, just as they, with their tricks and their manners, mock a person through a person's keyhole." An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist, close before her eyes, seemed to ease the mind of the person at the house. For she added with recovered, composure, "No, no, no! New children for me! Give me grown-ups!" It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature. For her poor figure, furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so young and so old. Twelve, what the most thirteen, might be near the mark? "I always did like grown-ups," she went on, "and always kept company with them. So sensible, sit so quiet, don't go prancing and capering about, and I mean always, to keep among known but grown-ups to lie merry. I suppose I must make up my mind to marry one of these days?" She listened to a step outside, at caught her ear, and there was a soft knock at the door. Pulling it to handle within her reach, she said, with a pleased laugh, "Now, here, for instance, is a grown-up that's my particular friend." And Lizzy Hexham, in a black dress, entered the room. "Charly, you!" Taking him to her arms in the old way, of which she seemed a little ashamed, she saw no one else. "There, there, Liz, all right, my dear, see, here's Mr. Edstown, come with me." Her eyes met those of the schoolmaster, who had evidently expected to see a very different sort of person, and a murmured word or two of salutation passed between them. She was a little flurried by the unexpected visit, and the schoolmaster was not a disease, but he never was, quite. "I told Mr. Edstown you were not settled, Liz, but he was so kind as to take an interest in coming, and so I brought him." "How well you look!" "Baddly seemed to think so." "Ah, don't she, don't she?" cried the person at the house, resuming her occupation, though the twilight was falling fast. "I believe you, she does. But go on with your chat, one and all. You, one, two, three, my company, and don't mind me." Pointing this impromptu rhyme were three points of her thin forefinger. "I didn't expect to visit from you, Charlie," said her sister. "I supposed, if you wanted to see me, you would have sent to me a point in it to come somewhere near the school as I did last time. I saw my brother near the school, sir." "Two Bradley Headstone." "Because it's easier for me to go with here than for him to come here. I'll work about midway between the two places." "You don't see much of one another," said Bradley, not improving in respect of ease. "Now," the rather a sad shake of her head, "cholly always does well, Mr. Headstone." "He could not do better. I regard his course as quite plain before him." "I hope so." "I'm so thankful. So well done of you, Charlie, dear. It is better for me not to come, except what he wants me, between him and his prospects. You think so, Mr. Headstone?" Conscious, that his pupil teacher was looking for his answer, that he himself had suggested the boys keeping a roof from this sister, now seen for the first time face-to-face, Bradley Headstone, stammered. "Your brother is very much occupied, you know. He has to work hard. One can, I'd say, that the less his attention is diverted from his work, the better for his future. When he shall have established himself, why, then it will be another thing, then?" Lizzie shook her head again and returned with a quiet smile. "I always advised him, as you advised him. Did I not, Charlie?" "Well, never mind that now," said the boy, "how are you getting on?" "Very well, Charlie. I want for nothing." "You have your own room here?" "Oh, yes, hapstairs, and it's quiet and pleasant and airy." "And she always has the use of this room for visitors," said the person of the house, screwing up one of her little bony fists, I can opera glass, and looking through it with her eyes and her chin in that quaint accordance, "Always this room for visitors, haven't you, Lizzie dear?" It happened that Bradley Headstone noticed a very slight action of Lizzie Hexham's hand, as though it checked the doll's dressmaker, and it happened that the latter noticed him in the same instant, for she made a double-eyed lass of her two hands, looked at him through it, and cried with a waggish shake of her head, "Ah-hah, caught you spying, did I?" It might have fallen out so, anyway, but Bradley Headstone also noticed that immediately after this, Lizzie, who had not taken off her bonnet, rather hurriedly proposed that as the room was getting dark, they should go out into the air. They went out, the visitors saying goodnight to the doll's dressmaker, whom they left, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed, singing to herself in a sweet, thoughtful little voice. "I'll saunter on by the river," said Bradley, "you will be glad to talk together." As his uneasy figure went on before them, among the evening shadows, the boy said to his sister petulantly, "When are you kind of setting yourself in some Christian sort of place-lids? I thought you were going to do it before now?" "I'm very well where I am, Charlie. Very well where you are. I'm ashamed to have brought Mr. Headstone with me. How came you to get into such a company as that little witch's?" "By chance at first it seemed, Charlie, but I think it must have been by something more than chance. For that child, you remember the bills upon the walls at home?" "Could found the bills upon the walls at home? I would have forget the bills upon the walls at home, and it would be better for you to do the same," crumbled the boy. "Well, what of them?" "This child is the grandchild of the old man." "What old man?" "The terrible, drunken old man in the list slippers in the nightcap." The boy asked, rubbing his nose in a manner that half expressed vexation adhering so much, and half curiosity to hear more. "How came you to make that out? What girl you are?" "The child's father is employed by the house that employs me. That's how I came to know it, Charlie. The father is like his own father, a weak, wretched, trembling creature, falling to pieces, never sober, but a good workman too, at the work he does. The mother is dead. This poor, ailing little creature has come to be what she is, surrounded by drunken people from her cradle, if you ever had one, Charlie." "I don't see what you have to do with ever all that," said the boy. "Don't you, Charlie?" The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank, and the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on the shoulder and pointed to it. "Any compensation, restitution, never mind the word, you know, my meaning. Father's grave." But he did not respond with any tenderness. After moody silence, he broke out in an ill-used tone. "He'll be a very hard thing, Liz. If, when I am trying my best to get up in the world, you pull me back." "Aye, Charlie?" "Yes, you, Liz. Why can't you let bargains be bargains? Why can't you, as Miss Dead said to me this very evening, about another matter, leave well alone? What we've got to do is to turn our faces, fall in our new direction, and keep straight on." "I never look back. Not even to try to make some amends. You are such a dream," said the boy, with his former petulance. "It's all very well when we sat before the fire, when we looked into the hollow down by the flare. But we are looking into the real world now." "Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charlie." "I understand what you mean by that, but you're not justified in it. I don't want, as I raise myself to shake you off, Liz. I want to carry you up with me. That's what I want to do, and mean to do. I know what I owe you. I sent Miss Eddstone's very evening. After all, my sister got me here. Well then, don't pull me back and hold me down. That's all I ask, and surely that's not unconscionable?" She had kept a steadfast look upon him, and she answered with composure. "I am not here selfishly, Charlie. To please myself. I could not be too far from that river. Nor could you be too far from it to please me. Let us get quick of it equally. Why should you linger about it any more than I? I give it a wide berth." "I can't get away from it, I think," said Lizzy, passing her hand across her forehead. "It's no purpose of mine that I live by it still." "There you go, Liz. Dreaming again. You laud yourself of your own accord, in a house with a drunken tailor, I suppose, or something of a sort, and a little crooked antique of a child, or old person, or whatever it is. And then you talk as if you were drawn or divinee. Now, do be more practical." She had been practical enough with him, in suffering and striving for him. But she only laid her hand upon his shoulder, not reproachfully, and tapped it twice or thrice. She had been used to do so to soothe him when she carried him about a child as heavy as herself. Tears started to his eyes. "Upon my word, Liz," drawing the back of his hand across them, "I mean, to pick a brother to you, and approve that I know I owe you. All I say is that I hope you control your fences a little on my account. I'll get a school, and then you must come and live with me, and you have to control your fences in. So why not now? Now, say I haven't vexed you. You haven't, Charlie. You haven't. And say, I haven't heard you. You haven't, Charlie. But this answer was less ready. "Say, you're sure I didn't mean to. Or come, there's Mr Edstown stopping and looking over the wall at the tide to hint that it's time to go. Kiss me, and tell me that you know I didn't mean to hurt you." She told him so, and they embraced, and walked on and came up with the schoolmaster. "That's, we go your sister's way," he remarked when the boy told him he was ready. And with his cumbrous and uneasy action, he stiffly offered her his arm. Her hand was just within it, when she drew it back. He looked round with a start, as if he thought she had detected something that repelled her in the momentary touch. "I will not go in just yet," said Lizzy, "and you have a distance before you, and will walk faster without me." Being by this time close to Vauksaw Bridge, they resolved in consequence to take that way over the Thames, and they left her. Badly Headstone giving her his hand at parting, and she thanking him for his care of her brother. The master and the pupil walked on rapidly and silently. They had nearly crossed the bridge, when a gentleman came coolly sauntering towards them with a cigar in his mouth, his coat thrown back, and his hands behind him. Something in the careless manner of this person, and in a certain lazily arrogant air with which he approached, holding possession of twice as much pavement as another would have claimed, instantly caught the boy's attention. As the gentleman passed, the boy looked at him narrowly, and then stood still, looking after him. "Who is that you stare after?" asked Bradley. "Why?" said the boy, with a confused and pondering frown upon his face. "It is! That rayburn one!" Bradley Headstone scrutinized the boy as closely as the boy had scrutinized the gentleman. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Headstone." Bracken out wondering, "What in the world brought in me here?" Though he said it, as if his wonder were passed, at the same time resuming the walk, it was not lost upon the master that he looked over his shoulder after speaking, and at the same perplexed and pondering frown was heavy on his face. "You don't appear to like your friend, Hexam." "I don't like him," said the boy. "Why not?" "He took hold of me by the chin in a precious impertinent way, the first time I ever saw him," said the boy. "Again, why?" "For nothing." "Or, it's much the same, because something I happen to say about my sister didn't happen to please him." "Then he knows your sister?" "He didn't at the time," said the boy, still moodily pondering, "does now." The boy had so lost himself that he looked at Mr. Bradley Headstone as they walked on side by side without attempting to reply until the question had been repeated. Then he nodded and answered, "Yes, sir." "Going to see her," I dare say. "It can't be," said the boy quickly. "He doesn't know well enough. I should largely catch him at it." When they had walked on for a time, more rapidly than before, the master said, clasping the pupil's arm between the elbow and the shoulder with his hand, "You were going to tell me something about that person. What did you say his name was?" Rayburn. "Mr. Eugene Rayburn. He's what they call a barrister. There's nothing to do. The first time it came to our old place was when my father was alive. He came on business, not that it was his business. He never had any business. He was brought by a friend of his." And the other times? "There was only one other time I know of, when my father was killed by accident. He chanced to be one of the finders. He was mooning about, I suppose, taking liberties with people's chins. But there he was, somehow. He brought the news out to my sister early in the morning and brought Miss Abby Poterson, a neighbour, to help break it to her. He was mooning about the house when I was fetched home in the afternoon. They didn't know where to find me till my sister could be brought round sufficiently to tell them, and then he mooned away. "And is that all?" "That's all, sir." Badly headstone gradually released the boy's arm, as if he were thoughtful, and they walked on side by side as before. After long silence between them, Badly resumed the talk. "I suppose your sister, with a curious break both before and after the words, has received hardly any teaching, Hexam." "Hardly any, sir." sacrificed, no doubt, to her father's objections. I remember them in your case. Yet your sister scarcely looks or speaks like an ignorant person. "Lizzy, as his much thought as the best, Miss Headstone. Too much, perhaps, without teaching. I used to call a fire at home, her books. Well, she was always full of fancies, sometimes quite wise fancies, considering, when she sat looking at it." "I don't like that," said Badly headstone. His pupil was a little surprised by this striking inn with so sudden and decided an emotional objection, but took it as a proof of the master's interest in himself. It emboldened him to say, "I've never brought myself to mention it ultimately to you, Miss Headstone, and your my witness that I couldn't even make up my mind to take it from you before we came out tonight. But it's a painful thing to think that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall be, I won't say, disgraced, because I don't mean disgraced, but rather put to the blush, if it was known, by a sister who has been very good to me." "Yes," said Badly headstone, in a slurring way, for his mind scarcely seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it lie to another. "And there is this possibility to consider. Some man who had worked his way might come to admire your sister, and might even in time bring himself to think of marrying your sister, and it would be a sad drawback and a heavy penalty upon him if overcoming in his mind other inequalities of condition and other considerations against it. This inequality and this consideration remained in full force." "That's much my own meaning," said Badly headstone. "But you spoke of a mere brother." "No. In a case, I have supposed would be a much stronger case, because an admirer, a husband, would form the connection voluntarily, besides being obliged to proclaim it, which your brother is not. After all, you know, it must be said of you that you couldn't help yourself, while it would be said of him, with equal reason, that he could." "That's true, sir. Sometimes, since Lizzie was left free by father's death, I thought that such a young woman might soon acquire more than enough to pass muster, and sometimes I've even thought that perhaps miss-peacher or their purpose I would advise not miss-peacher." Badly headstone struck in with the recurrence of his late decision of manner. "Would you be so kind as to think of it for me, Mr. Headstand?" "Yes, Hexel. Yes. No, I'll think of it. I'll think materially of it. I'll think well of it." Their walk was almost a silent one afterwards, until it ended at the schoolhouse. "There, one of neat miss-peachers little windows, like the eyes and needles, was illuminated, and in a corner near it, sat Mary Ann watching, while Miss-peacher at the table stitched at the neat little body she was making up by brown paper-pattern for her own wearing. "N.B. Miss-peacher and Miss-peacher's pupils were not much encouraged in the unscolastic art of needlework by government. Mary Ann, with her face to the window, held her arm up." "Well, Mary Ann. Mr. Headstand coming home, Mum." "In about a minute, Mary Ann hailed again." "Yes, Mary Ann. Gone in and locked his door, Mum." Miss-peacher repressed a sigh, as she gathered her work together for bed, and transfixed at part of her dress, where her heart would have been, if she had had the dress on, with a sharp, sharp needle. End of Book 2 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Still Educational The person of the house, doll's dressmaker and manufacturer of ornamental pin cushions and pen wipers, sat in her quaint little low armchair, singing in the dark, until Lizzy came back. The person of the house had attained that dignity, while yet of very tender years, indeed, through being the only trustworthy person in the house. "Well, Lizzy, Missy, Lizzy," said she, breaking off in her song, "Watch the news out of doors." "Watch the news indoors," returned Lizzy, playfully smoothing the bright, long, fair hair, which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the head of the doll's dressmaker. "Let me see," said the blind man, "why, the last news is that I don't mean to marry your brother." "No." "No," checking her head on her chin, "don't like the boy." "What do you say to his master?" "I say, I think he's bespoke." Lizzy finished putting the hair carefully back over the misshapen shoulders, and then lighted a candle. It showed the little parlor to be dingy, but orderly and clean. She stood it on the mantel shelf, remote from the dressmaker's eyes, and then put the room door open and the house door open, and turned the little low chair and its occupant towards the outer air. It was a sultry night, and this was a fine weather arrangement when the day's work was done. To complete it, she seated herself in a chair by the side of the little chair, and protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand that crept up to her. "This is what your loving Jenny Vinn calls the best time in the day and night," said the person of the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver, but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren. "I've been thinking," Jenny went on, "as I sat at work today, what a thing it would be if I should be able to have your company till I am married, or at least courted, because when I am courted I shall make him to some of the things that you do for me. He couldn't brush my hair like you do, or help me up and down stairs like you do, and he couldn't do anything like you do, but he could take my work home, and he could call for orders in his clumsy way, and he shall too." Hey Amazon Prime members! Why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? 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