Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend_Part_2
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- Broadcast on:
- 11 Oct 2024
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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. Ryan Seacrest here. When you have a busy schedule it's important to maximize your downtime. One of the best ways to do that is by going to Chumbakasino.com. Chumbakasino has all your favorite social casino games like spin slots, bingo, and solitaire that you can play for free for a chance to redeem some serious prizes. So hop on to Chumbakasino.com now and live the Chumbalife. Sponsored by Chumbakasino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void were prohibited by law. 18+ terms and conditions apply. "I'll talk to him about. I can tell him." Jenny Ren had her personal vanities, happily for her, and no intentions were stronger in her breasts than the various trials and torments that were in the fullness of time to be inflicted upon him. "Where ever he may happen to be just at present, or whoever he may happen to be," said Ms. Ren. "I know he's tricks in his manners, and I give him warning to look out." "Don't you think you're rather hard upon him?" asked her friend, smiling and smoothing her hair. "Not a bit," replied the sage, Ms. Ren, for an air of vast experience. "My dear, they don't care for you, those fellows, if you're not hard upon them. But I'll be saying, if I should be able to have your company, ah, what a large if, ain't it?" "I have no intention upon company, Jenny. Don't say that, or you'll go directly. Am I so little to be relied upon? You're more to be relied upon than silver and gold?" As she said it, Ms. Ren suddenly broke off, screwed up her eyes and her chin, and looked prodigiously knowing. "Ah-ha! Who comes here, a griner dear? What does he want? A pot of beer, and nothing else in the world, my dear?" A man's figure paused on the pavement at the outer door. "Mr. Eugene Rayburn, ain't it?" said Ms. Ren. "So I am told," was the answer. "You may come in, if you're good." "I am not good," said Eugene, "but I'll come in." He gave his hand to Jenny Ren, and he gave his hand to Lizzie, and he stood leaning by the door at Lizzie's side. He had been strolling with his cigar, he said. It was smoked out and gone by this time, and he had stalled round to return in that direction that he might look in as he passed. Had she not seen her brother tonight? "Yes," said Lizzie, whose manner was a little troubled. "Gracious condescension on our brother's part. Mr. Eugene Rayburn thought he had passed, my young gentleman, on the bridge under, who was his friend with him?" "The schoolmaster," to be sure, looked like it. Lizzie sat so still that one could not have said wherein the fact of her manner being troubled was expressed, and yet one could not have doubted it. Eugene was as easy as ever, but perhaps as she sat with her eyes cast down, it might have been rather more perceptible that his attention was concentrated upon her for certain moments than its concentration upon any subject for any short time ever was elsewhere. "I have nothing to report, Lizzie," said Eugene, "but having promised you that an eye should be always kept on Mr. Ryderhood through my friend Lightwood, I like occasionally to renew my assurance that I keep my promise and keep my friend up to the mark." "I should not have doubted it, sir." "Generally I confess myself a man to be doubted," returned Eugene Cooley, "for all that." "Why are you?" asked the sharp Miss Ren. "And because, my dear," said the airy Eugene, "I am a bad idle dog." "Then why don't you reform and be a good dog?" inquired Miss Ren. "Mere cars, my dear," returned Eugene, "there's nobody who makes it worth my while. Have you considered my suggestion, Lizzie?" "This in a lower voice, but only as if it were a graver matter, not at all to the exclusion of the person of the house." "I have thought of it, Mr. Rayburn, but I have not been able to make up my mind to accept it." "False pride," said Eugene, "I think not, Mr. Rayburn. I hope not." "False pride," repeated Eugene, "why? What else is it?" "The thing is worth nothing in itself. The thing is worth nothing to me. What can it be worth to me?" "You know the most I make of it. I propose to be of some use to somebody, which I never was in this world and never shall be on any other occasion, by paying some qualified person of your own sex and age, so many or rather so few contemptible shillings to come here certain nights in the week and give you certain instruction which you wouldn't want if you hadn't been a self-denying daughter and sister. You know that it's good to have it, or you would never have so devoted yourself to your brothers having it. Then why not have it? Especially when our friend Miss Jenny here would profit by it, too, if I propose to be the teacher, or to attend the lessons, obviously, in Congress. But as of that, I might as well be on the other side of the globe, or not on the globe at all. False pride, Lizzie, because true pride wouldn't shame, or be shamed by, your thankless brother. True pride wouldn't have schoolmasters brought here, like doctors, to look at a bad case. True pride would go to work and do it. You know that, well enough, for you know that your own true pride would do it tomorrow if you had the ways and means which false pride won't let me supply. Very well. I add no more than this. Your false pride does wrong to yourself and does wrong to your dead father. "How to my father, Mr. Rayburn?" she asked, with an anxious face. "How to your father? Can you ask?" By perpetuating the consequences of his ignorant and blind obstinacy, by resolving not a set right the wrong he did you, by determining, at the deprivation to which he condemned you, and which he forced upon you, shall always rest upon his head. It turns to be a subtle string to sound, in her who had so spoken to her brother within the hour. She sounded far more forcibly, because of the change in the speaker for the moment. The passing appearance of earnestness, complete conviction, injured resentment of suspicion, generous and unselfish interest. All these qualities in him usually so light and careless, she thought to be inseparable from some touch of their opposites in her own breast. She thought, had she, so far below him and so different, rejected this disinterestedness because of some vain misgiving that he sought her out or heeded any personal attractions that he might describe in her. The poor girl, pure of heart and purpose, could not bear to think of it. Sinking before her own eyes, as she suspected herself of it, she drooped her head as though she had done him some wicked and grievous injury and broke into silent tears. "Don't be distressed," said Eugene, "very, very kindly. I hope it is not I who have distressed you. I meant no more than to put the matter in its too light before you, though I acknowledge I did it selfishly enough, for I am disappointed." Disappointed of doing her a service, "how else could he be disappointed?" "It won't break my heart," laughed Eugene, "it won't stay by me eight and forty hours, but I am genuinely disappointed. I had set my fancy on doing this little thing for you and for our friend Miss Jenny. The novelty of my doing anything of the least useful at its charms. I see now that I might have managed it better. I might have affected to do it wholly for our friend Miss Jay. I might have got myself up, morally, as Sir Eugene bountiful. But upon myself, I can't make flourishes, and I would rather be disappointed than try." 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. 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 you meant to follow a home what was in Lizzie's thoughts, it was skillfully done. If he followed it by mere fortuitous coincidence, it was done by an evil chance. "It opened out so naturally before me," said Eugene, "the ball seemed so thrown into my hands by accident. I happened to be originally brought into contact with you, Lizzie, on those two occasions that you know of, I happen to be able to promise you that a watch shall be kept upon that false accuser, ride a hood. I happen to be able to give you some little consolation in the darkest hour of your distress by assuring you that I don't believe him. On the same occasion, I tell you that I am the idlest and least of lawyers, but I am better than none. In a case I have noted down with my own hand and that you may be always sure of my best help and incidentally of Lightwoods, too, in your efforts to clear your father. So it gradually takes my fancy that I may help you so easily, to clear your father or that other blame which I mentioned a few minutes ago and which is a just and real one. I hope I have explained myself, for I am heartily sorry to have distressed you. I hate to claim to mean well, but I really did mean honestly and simply well, and I want you to know it. "I have never doubted that, Mr. Rayburn," said Lizzie, the more repentant, the less he claimed. "I am very glad to hear it, though if you had quite understood my whole meaning at first, I think you would not have refused. Do you think you would?" "I don't know that I should, Mr. Rayburn." "Well, then why refuse now you do understand it?" "It's not easy for me to talk to you," returned Lizzie in some confusion, "for you see all the consequences of what I say as soon as I say it." "Take all the consequences," laughed Eugene, "and take away my disappointment. Lizzie hex him, as I truly respect you, and as I am your friend and our poor devil of a gentleman, I protest I don't even now understand why you hesitate." There was an appearance of openness, trustfulness, unsuspecting generosity in his words and manner that won the poor girl over. And not only won her over, but again coursed her to feel as though she had been influenced by the opposite qualities with vanity at their head. "I will not hesitate any longer, Mr. Rayburn. I hope you will not think the worse of me for having hesitated at all, for myself and for Jenny. You let me answer for you, Jenny, dear?" The little creature had been leaning back, attentive, with her elbows resting on the elbows of her chair, and her chin upon her hands. Without changing her attitude, she answered, "Yes!" So suddenly, that it rather seemed as if she had chopped the monosyllable and spoken it. "For myself and for Jenny, I thankfully accept your kind offer." Agreed. Dismissed. Said Eugene, giving Lizzie his hand before lightly waving it, as if he waved a whole subject away. "I hope it may not be often that so much is made of so little." Then he felt a talking playfully with Jenny Ren. "I think of setting up a doll, Miss Jenny," he said. "You would better not," replied the decemaker. "Why not?" "You are sure to break it? All you children do." "But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Ren. Returned Eugene. Much as people's breaking promises and contracts and bargains of all sorts makes good for my trade." "I don't know about that," Miss Ren retorted, "but you better buy a half, set up a pen wiper and turn industrious and use it." "Why, if we were almost industrious as you, little busybody, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing." "Do you mean?" returned the little creature with a flush, suffusing her face. "Bad! For your backs and legs!" "No, no, no, no!" said Eugene, shocked to do him justice at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. "Bad! For business! Bad for business! If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the doll's dress-makers." "There's something in that," replied Miss Ren. "You have a sort of an idea in your novel sometimes?" Then in a changed tone, "talking of ideas, my Lizzie?" They were sitting side by side as they had sat at first. "I wonder how it happens, that when I am work, work, work in here, all alone in the summer time, I smell flowers." As a common place individual, I should say, Eugene suggested languidly, for he was growing weary of the person of the house. That few smell flowers, because you do smell flowers. "No, I don't," said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair. Resting a chin upon that hand and looking vacantly before her. "This is not a flowery neighbourhood, it's anything but that, and yet, as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers, or smell roses, till I think I see the rose leaves lying in heaps. Bushles, on the floor, I smell fallen leaves till I put down my hand, so, and expect to make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink mane in the edges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was a mom, for I have seen very few flowers indeed, in my life." "Plessoned, fancy as to have Jenny, dear," said her friend, with a glance towards Eugene, as if you would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses. "So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me, and the birds are here, oh!" cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, "How they sing!" There was something in the face and action for the moment, quite inspired and beautiful, then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again. "I dare say, my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell better than other flowers, for when I was a little child." In a tone as though it were ages ago, "The children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others that I ever saw. They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain; they were not like the children of the neighbours; they never made me tremble all over, but I said in actual noises, and they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too, all in white dresses and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I had never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long bright, slanting rows, and say altogether, "Who is this in pain? Who is this in pain?" When I told them who it was, they answered, "Come and play with us!" Then I said, "I never play; I can't play. They swept about me, and took me up, and made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest, till they laid me down, and said, "All together, have patience, and we all come again." Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw the long bright rows, but I hear them ask, "All together, a long way off, who is this in pain? Who is this in pain?" And I used to cry out, "Oh, my blessed children, it's a poor me. Have pity on me? Chate me up, and make me light." I'd agree, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised, the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful. Having so poor as for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face, she looked round, and recalled herself, "What poor finally you think me, don't you, Mr. Rayburn? You may well look tired of me, but it's Saturday night, and I won't detain you." That is to say, Ms. Ren, observed Eugene quite ready to puffer by the hint, "You wish me to go." "Well, it's Saturday night," she returned, "and my child's coming home, and my child is a troublesome bad child, and cost me a world of scalding. I would rather you didn't see my child." "Uh, doll?" said Eugene, not understanding and looking for an explanation. But Lizzy, with her lips only, shaping the two words, her father, he delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague. Who knows what he is doing? Who is careless what he does? A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some mortal an apology. Looking out of this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by which he himself had just come out. When the man stumbling into the room, Lizzy rose to leave it. "Joke away, Miss action," he said in a submissive manner, speaking thickly and with difficulty. "Joke fly from unfortunate man in shattered state of health. Give poor, invalid honour of your company. He ain't, ain't catching." Lizzy murmured that she had something to do in her own room, and went away upstairs. "How's my journey?" said the man timidly. "How's my journey when, best of children, object-to-urished affections, broken hearted invalid?" To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an attitude of command, replied with a responsive asperity. "Go along with you. Go along into your corner. Get into your corner directly." The wretched spectacle made as if you would have offered some remonstrance, but not venturing to resist the person of the house, thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of disgrace. "Oooooh," cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger, "you bad old boy! You naughty, wicked creature! What do you mean by it?" The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put out its two hands a little way as making overtures of peace and reconciliation. Object tears stood in its eyes and stained the blotched red of its cheeks. The swollen, lead-coloured under lip, trembled with a shameful wine. The whole, indecorous thread-bear ruin from the broken shoe to the prematurely grey, scanty hair, groveled, not with any sense worthy to be called a sense of this dire reversal of the places of parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a scolding. "I know your tricks and your manners," cried Miss Renn, "I know where you've been, too." Which indeed it did not require discernment to discover, "Oooooh, you disgraceful old chap!" The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock, "Slave, slave, slave from morning to night," pursued the person of the house, "and all for this—what do you mean by it?" There was something in that emphasised what, which absurdly frightened the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to it, even as soon as he saw it was coming, he collapsed at an extra degree. "I wish you had been taken up and locked up," said the person of the house, "I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes, and run over by wrecks and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks and their manners, and they'd have tickled you nicely. Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" "Hish, my dear," stammered the father, "then," said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grandmaster of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic word, "What do you mean by it?" "Shirk room's dances, however which had now control," was the miserable creature's plea in extenuation. "I'll circumstance you and control you," retorted the person of the house, speaking with vehement sharpness, "If you talk in that way, I'll give you in charge of the police, and have you find five shillings and you can't pay, and I won't pay the money for you, and you'll be transported for life." 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. How should you like to be transported for life? Shouldn't like it, poor, shared in for lead, troubled nobody long. Tried the wretched figure, "Come, come!" said the person at the house, tapping the table near her in a business-like manner and shaking her head and chin, "You know what you've got to do. Put down your money this instant." Your obedient figure began to rummage in its pockets. "Spent a fortune out of your wages. I'll be bound!" said the person at the house. "Put it here. All you've got left, every farthing." Such a business as he made of collecting it from his dog-seared pockets, of expecting it in this pocket and not finding it, of not expecting it in that pocket and passing it over, of finding no pocket where that other pocket ought to be. "Use this, all?" demanded the person at the house, when a confused heap of pence and shillings lay on the table. "God, now more!" was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of the head. "You've been baked, sure. You know what you've got to do. Turn all your pockets inside out and leave 'em so!" cried the person at the house. He obeyed, and if anything could have made him look more abject or more dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been his soul displaying himself. "Here's but, Seven, and I can take thee!" exclaimed Miss Ren, after reducing the heap to order. "Ow! You poor to glow, Son! Now you shall be starved! Now! Don't starve me!" he urged, whimpering. "If you were treated, as you ought to be!" said Miss Ren. "You'll be fed upon the skewers of cat's meat. Only the skewers, after the cat's dead the meat! As it is, go to bed!" When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put out both his hands and pleaded, "Shirk 'em, Miss Darneses, how are which now control?" "Get along with you to bed!" cried Miss Ren, snapping him up. "Don't speak to me! I'm not going to forgive you. Go to bed this moment!" Using another emphatic "wot" upon its way, he evaded it by complying, and was heard to shuffle heavily upstairs, and shut his door, and throw himself on his bed. Within a little while afterwards, Lizzy came down. "Shall we have our supper, Jenny, dear?" "Oh! Bless us and save us! We need to have some that they keep us going," returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders. Lizzy laid a cloth upon the little bench, more handy for the person of the house than an ordinary table, and put upon it such plain fare as they were accustomed to have, and drew up a stool for herself. "Now, for supper. What are you thinking of, Jenny Darling?" "I was thinking," she returned, coming out of a deep study, "what I would do to him, if he should turn out a drunkard." "Oh, but he won't," said Lizzy, "you take care of that before-end." "I should try to take care of it before-end, but he might deceive me. Ow, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do deceive," with a little fist in full action, "and if so, I'll tell you what I think I do. When he was asleep, I'd make a spoon redot, and I'd have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan. And I'd take it out hissing, and I'd open his mouth for the other hand, or perhaps he'd sleep with his mouth ready open, and I'd pour it down his throat and blister it and choke him." "I'm sure you would do no such horrible thing," said Lizzy. "Shouldn't I?" "Well, perhaps I shouldn't, but I should not, too." "I'm equally sure you would not." "Not even like to, well, you generally know best, only you haven't always lived a moment as I have lived, and your back isn't bad and your legs are not queer." As they went on with their supper, Lizzy tried to bring her round to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The person at the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep, the sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew of the world, worldly, of the earth, earthy. Poor doll's dressmaker, how often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up, how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance. Poor, poor, little doll's dressmaker. "End of Book 2, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, a piece of work." "Ritania, sitting meditating one fine day, perhaps in the attitude in which she is presented on the copper coinage, discovers all of a sudden that she wants for nearing impalement. It occurs to her that the nearing is a representative man, which can it in these times be doubted, and that her majesty's faithful commons are incomplete without him." So, Ritania mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if the nearing will put down five thousand pounds, he may write a couple of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between Ritania and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five thousand pounds, but that being put down, they will disappear by magical conjuration and enchantment. The legal gentleman in Ritania's confidence going straight from that lady to the nearing, thus commissioned, the nearing declares himself highly flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain whether his friends will rally around him. Above all things, he says, it behose him to be clear at a crisis of this importance whether his friends will rally around him. The legal gentleman in the interest of his client cannot allow much time for this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds, but he says he will give the nearing four hours. The nearing then says to Mrs. Veneering, "We must work," and throws himself into a handsome cab. Mrs. Veneering in the same moment relinquishes baby to nurse, presses her aquiline hands upon her brow to arrange the throbbing intellect within, orders out the carriage, and repeats in a distracted and devoted manner, compounded or a filia, and any self-immolating female of antiquity you may prefer, "We must work!" Veneering, having instructed his driver to charge at the public in the streets, like the lifeguards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to Duke Street, St. James's. There he finds tremolo in his lodgings, fresh from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something to his hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that tremolo shell, for two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright and dry gradually, he is in an appropriate state for the receipt of startling intelligence, looking equally like the monument on Fish Street Hill and King Priam, on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly unknown as a neat point from the classics. "My dear, tremolo," says Veneering, grasping both his hands, "as the dearest and oldest of my friends, then there can be no more doubt about it in future, thinks tremolo, and I am." "Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would give his name as a member of my committee? I don't go so fast to ask for his lordship, I only ask for his name. Do you think he would give me his name?" In sudden, low spirits, tremolo replies, "I don't think he would." "My political opinions," says Veneering, not previously aware of having any, "are I identical with those of Lord Snigsworth, and perhaps as a matter of public feeling and public principle, Lord Snigsworth would give me his name." "It might be so," says Tremolo, "but, and perplexedly scratching his head, forgetful of the yolks of eggs, is the more discomforted by being reminded how sticky he is. I mean, such old and intimate friends as ourselves," pursues Veneering, "there should in such a case be no reserve. Promise me that if I ask you to do anything for me which you don't like to do, or feel the slightest difficulty in doing, you will freely tell me so." This tremolo is so kind as to promise, with every appearance of most heartily intending to keep his word. "Would you have any objection to write down to Snigsworthy Park and ask this favour Lord Snigsworth? Of course, if it were granted, I should know that I owed it solely to you, while at the same time you would put it to Lord Snigsworth entirely upon public grounds. Would you have any objection?" Says Tremolo, with his hand to his forehead, "You have exacted a promise from me. I have, my dear Tremolo, and you expect me to keep it honourably. I do, my dear Tremolo. On the whole, then, observe me, there just tremolo with great nicety, as if, in the case of its having been off the whole, he would have done it directly. On the whole, I must thank you to Excuse me from addressing any communication to Lord Snigsworth." "Bless you, bless you!" says Veneering, horribly disappointed, but grasping him by both hands again in a particularly fervent manner. It is not to be wondered out that poor Tremolo should decline to inflict a letter on his noble cousin, who has gout in the temper. Inasmuch as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which he lives, takes out of him, as the phrase goes, in extreme severity, putting him, when he visits at Snigsworthie Park, under a kind of martial law, ordaining that he shall hang his hat on a particular peg, sit on a particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular people, and perform particular exercises, such as sounding the praises of the family varnish, not to say pictures, and abstaining from the choicest of the family wines unless expressly invited to partake. "One thing, however I, can do for you," says Tremolo, "and that is work for you." Veneering blesses him again. "I'll go," says Tremolo, an arising hurry of spirits, "to the club. Let us see now what o'clock is it?" "Twenty minutes to eleven." "I'll be," says Tremolo, "at the club, by ten minutes to twelve, and I'll never leave it all day." Veneering feels that his friends are rallying round him, and says, "Thank you, thank you. I knew I could rely upon you. I said to Anastasia before leaving home just now to come to you. Of course the first friend I have seen on a subject so momentous to me, my dear Tremolo, I said to Anastasia, "We must work." "You were right, you were right," replies Tremolo, "tell me, is she working?" "She is," says Veneering, "good," cries Tremolo, polite little gentleman that he is. A woman's attack is invaluable. To have the dear sex with us is to have everything with us, but you have not imparted to me," remarks Veneering, "what do you think of my entering the House of Commons?" "I think," rejoins Tremolo feelingly, "that it is the best club in London." Veneering again blesses him, plunges downstairs, rushes into his handsome, and directs the driver to be up and at the British public, and to charge into the city. Meanwhile Tremolo, in an increasing hurry of spirits, gets his hair down as well as he can, which is not very well, for after these glutinous applications it is restive and has a surface somewhat in the nature of pastry, and gets to the club by the appointed time. At the club he promptly secures a large window, writing materials, and all the newspapers, and establishes himself immovable to be respectfully contemplated by Paul Marl. And a man enters, who nods to him, Tremolo says, "Do you know Veneering?" Man says, "No," member of the club. Tremolo says, "Yes, coming in for pocket-britches." Man says, "Ah, hope it may find it worth the money." Yorns and saunters out. Towards six o'clock of the afternoon Tremolo begins to persuade himself that he is positively jaded with work, and thinks it much to be regretted that he was not brought up as a parliamentary agent. From Tremolo's, Veneering dashes at Potsnap's place of business. Finds Potsnap reading the paper, standing, and inclined to be oratorical over the astonishing discovery has made that Italy is not England. Respectfully entreats Potsnap's pardon, stopping the flow of his words of wisdom, and informs him what is in the wind. Tells Potsnap at their political opinions are identical. Does Potsnap do understand that he, Veneering, formed his political opinions while sitting at the feet of him, Potsnap, seeks earnestly to know other Potsnap will rally round him? Says Potsnap, something sternly. "Now, first of all, Veneering, do you ask my advice?" Veneering falters that are so old and so dear a friend, "Yes, yes, that's all very well," says Potsnap, "but have you made up your mind to take this burrow of pocket-britches on its own terms, or do you ask my opinion whether you shall take it or leave it alone?" Veneering repeats that his heart's desire and his soul's thirst are that Potsnap shall rally round him. "Now, I'll be playing with you, Veneering," says Potsnap, knitting his brows, "you will infer that I don't care about Parliament and the fact of my not being there. Why, of course, Veneering knows that. Of course, Veneering knows that if Potsnap chose to go there, he would be there, in a space of time that might be stated by the light and thoughtless as a jiffy. "If he's not worth my while," pursues Potsnap, becoming handsomely mollified, "and it is a reverse of important to my position, but it is not my wish to myself up as law for another man differently situated. You think it is worth your while, and is important to your position. Is that so?" Always with the provider that Potsnap will rally round him, Veneering thinks it is so. "In? You don't ask my advice," says Potsnap, "good, and I won't give it to you. But you do ask my help. Good, but I'll work for you." 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. This is issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank N.A. member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offers subject to change, terms apply. Veneering instantly blesses him, and apprises him that Twemlow is already working. Potsnap does not quite approve that anybody should be already working, regarding it rather than the light of a liberty, but tolerates Twemlow and says he is a well-connected old female who will do no harm. "I have nothing very particular to do today," adds Potsnap, and I'll mix with some influential people. I had engaged myself to dinner, but I'll send Mrs. Potsnap and get off going myself. And I'll dine with you at eight. It's important we should report progress and compare notes. Now, let me see. You ought to have a couple of active, energetic fellows of gentlemeny manners to go about. Veneering, after cogitation, thinks of boots and brewer. "Ooh, I have met at your house," says Potsnap. "Yes, they'll do very well, let them each have a cab and go about." Veneering immediately mentions what a blessing he feels it to possess a friend capable of such grand administrative suggestions, and really is elated to this going about of boots and brewer as an idea wearing an lecturing aspect and looking desperately like business. Leaving Potsnap at a hand gallop, he descends upon boots and brewer, who enthusiastically rally round him by it wants a bolting off in cabs, taking opposite directions. Then Veneering repairs to the legal gentleman in Britannia's confidence, and with him transacts some delicate affairs of business and issues in address to the independent electors of pocket-bridges, announcing that he is coming among them for their suffragers, as the Mariner returns to the home of his early childhood, a phrase which is none the worse for his never having been near the place in his life, and not even now distinctly knowing where it is. Mrs. Veneering, during the same eventful hours, is not idle. And no sooner does the carriage turn out, all complete, and she turns into it, all complete, and gives the word to Lady Tippens'. That charmer dwells over a stay-maker's and the Belgravian borders, with a life-size model in the window on the ground floor of a distinguished beauty in a blue petticoat stay-lace in hand, looking over her shoulder at the town in innocent surprise, as while she may define herself dressing under the circumstances. Lady Tippens at home— Lady Tippens at home, with a room darkened, and her back, like the ladies at the ground floor window, though for a different reason, cunningly turned towards the light. Lady Tippens is so surprised by seeing her dear Mrs. Veneering so early, in the middle of the night, the pretty creature calls it, that her eyelids almost go up under the influence of that emotion. To whom Mrs. Veneering incoherently communicates, how that Veneering has been offered pocket-bridges, how that it is the time for rallying round, how that Veneering has said, 'We must work, how that she is here as a wife and mother to entreat Lady Tippens to work, how that the carriages at Lady Tippens' disposal are purposes of work, how that she, proprietress, have said brand-new elegant equipage, will return home on foot on bleeding feet if need be, to work, not specifying how, until she drops by the side of baby's crib.' 'My love,' says Lady Tippens, 'compose yourselves, we'll bring him in.' Lady Tippens really does work, and works of Veneering horses too, where she clatters about town all day, calling upon everybody she knows, and showing her entertaining powers and green fan to immense advantage by rattling on with, 'My dear soul, what do you think? What do you suppose me to be? You'll never guess, I'm pretending to be an electioneering agent, and for what place of all places a pocket-bridges? And why? Because the dearest friend I have in the world has bought it, and who is the dearest friend I have in the world, a man of the name of Veneering, not omitting his wife, who's the other dearest friend I have in the world, and I positively declare I forgot their baby, who is the other. And we are carrying on this little fast to keep up appearances, and isn't it refreshing? Then, my precious child, the fun of it is, that nobody knows who these Veneerings are, and that they know nobody, and that they have a house out of the tales of the genie, and give dinners out of the Arabian Nights. Curious to see 'em, my dear, say you know 'em, come and dine with 'em, they shan't bore you, say who shall meet you, or make up a party of our own, and I'll engage that they should not interfere with you for one single moment, you really ought to see their gold and silver camels. I call it in a table the caravan. Do come and dine with my Veneerings, my own Veneerings, my exclusive property, the dearest friends I have in the world, and above all my dear, be sure you promise me your vote, and interest, and all sorts of plumpers for pocket-bitches, for we couldn't think of spending six months on it might have, and can only consent to be brought in by the spontaneous thingamies of the incorruptible audio columns. Now the point of view seized by the rewitching tippens that, this same work and rallying round as to keep up appearances, may have something in it, but not all the truth. More is done, or considered to be done, which does as well, by taking cabs and going about, and the fair tippens new of. Many vast vague reputations have been made, solely by taking cabs and going about. This particularly obtains in all parliamentary affairs, whether the business in hand be to get a man in, or get a man out, or get a man over, or promote a railway or jockey a railway or what else, nothing is understood to be so effectual as scouring nowhere in a violent hurry, in short as taking cabs and going about. Probably because this reason is in the air, Tremlow, far from being singular in his persuasion that he works like a trojan, is capped by pod-snap, who in his turn is capped by boots and brewer. At eight o'clock when all these hard workers assemble to dine at veneerings, it is understood that the cabs of boots and brewer mustn't leave the door, but that pales of water must be brought from the nearest baiting place and cast over the horse's legs on the very spot lest boots and brewer should have instant occasion to mountain away. Those fleet-messengers require the analytical to see that their hats are deposited where they can be laid hold of at an instant's notice, and they dine, remarkably well though, with the air of firemen in charge of an engine expecting intelligence of some tremendous conflagration. Mr. Veneering faintly remarks, as dinner opens, that many such days would be too much for her. Many such days would be too much for all of us, says pod-snap, but we'll bring him in. "We'll bring him in," says Lady Tippen's sportably waving her green fan, "Veneering forever." "We'll bring him in," says Tremlow. "We'll bring him in," says Boot and Brewer. Strictly speaking, it would be hard to show cause why they should not bring him in. They should not bring him in, as they should be, as they should be. However, it is agreed that they must work to the last, and that if they did not work, something indefinite would happen. It is likewise as breed that they are all so exhausted with the work behind them, and need to be so fortified for the work before them as to require peculiar strengthening from veneering cellar. Therefore the analytical has orders to produce the cream of the cream of his bins, and therefore it falls out that rallying becomes rather a trying word for the occasion. Lady Tippen's being observed gamely to inculcate the necessity of rearing round their dear veneering, pod-snap advocating roaring round him, Boot and Brewer declaring their intention of reeling round him, and veneering thanking his devoted friends, one and all, with great emotion for rarula-ruling round him. In these inspiring moments Brewer strikes out an idea which is the great hit of the day. He consults his watch, and says, like Guy Fawkes, "You'll now go down to the House of Commons and see how things look." "I'll keep about the lobby for an hour or so," says Brewer with a deeply mysterious countenance, "and if things look well I won't come back, but we'll order my cab for nine in the morning." "You couldn't do better," says Pot-Snap. Veneering expresses his inability ever to acknowledge this last service. Tears stand in Mrs. Veneering's affectionate eyes, "Boots!" shows envy, Luther's ground, and as regarded as possessing a second-rate mind, they all crowd the door to see Brewer off. Brewer says to his driver, "Now, is your horse pretty fresh?" "I, the animal with critical scrutiny," Driver says he says fresh as butter. "Put him along, then," says Brewer, "How's it, Commons?" Driver darts up, Brewer leaps in, it cheer him as he departs, and Mr. Pot-Snap says, "What my word, sir, that's a man of a source, that's a man to make his way in life!" When the time comes for Veneering to deliver a neat and appropriate stammer to the man of pocket-britches, only Pot-Snap and Twemlow accompany him by railway to that sequestered spot. The legal gentleman is at the Pocket-Britches branch station with an open carriage with a printed bill the nearing for ever stuck upon it, as if it were a wall, and that gloriously proceed amidst the grins of the populace to a feeble little town hall on crutches, with some onions and bootlaces under it, which the legal gentleman says are a market; and from the front window of that edifice, Veneering speaks to the listening-earth, and the moment of his taking his hat off Pot-Snap, as per agreement made with Mrs. Veneering, telegraphs to that wife and mother. He's up. Veneering loses his way in the usual no-thoroughfares of speech, and Pot-Snap and Twemlow say, "Hear, hear!" and sometimes when he can't, by any means back himself out of some very unlucky no-thoroughfare, "Hear, hear!" with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering makes two remarkably good points, so good that they are supposed to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman in Britannia's confidence, while briefly conferring on the stairs. Point the first is this, Veneering institutes an original comparison between the country and a ship, pointedly calling the ship "the vessel of the state, and the minister the man of the helm." Veneering's object is to let pocket-britches know that his friend on his right, Pot-Snap, is a man of wealth. Consequently as he, and a gentleman, when the timbers of the vessel of the state are unsound and a man of the helm is unskillful, would those great marine insurers, who rank among our world-famed merchant-printers, would they ensure her gentleman? Would they underwrite her? Would they incur a risk in her? Would they have confidence in her? Why, gentlemen, if I appeal to my honourable friend upon my right, himself among the greatest and most respected of that great and much respected class, he would answer no. Point the second is this, the telling fact that Tremlow is related to Lord Snigsworth must be let off. Veneering supposes a state of public affairs that probably never could, by any possibility, exist, though this is not quite certain in consequence of his picture being unintelligible to himself and everybody else, and thus proceeds. Why, gentlemen, if I were to indicate such a programme to any class of society, I say it would be received with derision, would be pointed at by the finger of scorn. If I indicated such a programme to any worthy and intelligent tradesmen of your town, nay, I will here be personal and say, our town. What would he reply? He would reply away with it. That is what he would reply, gentlemen. In his honest indignation he would reply away with it. What suppose? I mounted higher in the social scale. Suppose I drew my arm through the arm of my respected friend upon my left and, walking with him through the ancestral woods of his family, and under the spreading beaches of Snigsworthy Park approached the noble hall, crossed the courtyard entered by the door, went up the staircase, and, passing from room to room, found myself at last in the august presence of my friend's near Kinsman, Lord Snigsworth, and, suppose I said to that venerable L, my lord, I am here before your lordship presented by your lordship's near Kinsman, my friend upon my left, to indicate to that programme what was his lordship answer. Why he would answer away with it. That's what he would answer, gentlemen, away with it. And consciously using, in his exalted sphere, the exact language of the worthy and intelligent tradesman of our town, the near and dear Kinsman of my friend upon my left, would answer in his wrath, our way with it. Veneering finishes with this last success, and Mr. Pottsnap telegraphs to Mrs. Veneering, he's down. Then dinner is had at the hotel with the legal gentleman, and then there are in due succession, nomination, and declaration. Finally, Mr. Pottsnap telegraphs to Mrs. Veneering, we have brought him 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 favourites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon's favour, 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. Another gorgeous dinner awaits them on their returning to the Veneering Halls, and Lady Tippins awaits them, and Boots and Brewer await them. There is a modest assertion on everybody's part that everybody's single-handed brought him in. But in the main, it is conceded by all, that that stroke of business on Brewer's part in going down to the house that night to see how things looked was the master stroke. A touching little incident is related by Mrs. Veneering in the course of the evening. Mrs. Veneering is habitually disposed to be tearful and has an extra disposition that way after her late excitement. Previous to withdrawing from the dinner table with Lady Tippins, she says, in a pathetic and physically weak manner, "You will all think it foolish of me, I know, but I must mention it." As I sat about baby's crib on the night before the election, baby was very uneasy in her sleep. The analytical chemist, who is gloomily looking on, has diabolical impulses to suggest wind and throw up his situation, but represses them. After an interval, almost convulsive, baby curd her little hands in one another, and smiled. Mrs. Veneering, stopping here, Mr. Potsnap deems it incumbent on him to say, "I wonder why." "Could it be?" I asked myself, says Mrs. Veneering, looking about her for her pocket-hanger-chief. "That the fairies were telling baby that her papa would shortly be an MP?" So overcome by the sentiment is Mrs. Veneering, and they all get up to make a clear stage for Veneering, who goes round the table to the rescue, and bears her out backward, with her feet impressively scraping the carpet, after remarking that her work has been too much for her strength. After the fairies made any mention of the five thousand pounds, and it disagreed with baby, is not speculated upon. Poor little Twemlow, quite done up, is touched, and still continues touched after he is safely housed over the livery-stable yard in Duke Street, St. James's. But there, upon his sofa, a tremendous consideration breaks in upon the mild gentleman, putting all softer considerations to the fruit. Gracious heavens, now I have time to think of it, he never saw one of his constituents in all his days, until we saw them together. After having paced the room in distress of mind, with his hand to his forehead, the innocent Twemlow returns to his sofa and moans, "I shall either go distract you, or die of this man. He comes upon me too late in life. I am not strong enough to bear him." End of Book II Chapter III Chapter IV Cupid Prompted To use the cold language of the world, Mrs. Alfred Lamel rapidly improved the acquaintance of Miss Potsnap. To use the warm language of Mrs. Lamel, she and her sweet Georgiana soon became one, in heart, in mind, in sentiment, in soul. Whenever Georgiana could escape from the thralldom of Potsnapery, could throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured faitan, and get up, could shrink out of the range for mother's rocking, and, so to speak, rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over, she repaired to her friend Mrs. Alfred Lamel. Miss Potsnap, by no means objected. As a consciously splendid woman accustomed to overhear herself so denominated by elderly osteologists pursuing their studies in dinner society, Mrs. Potsnap could dispense with her daughter. Mr. Potsnap, for his part, on being informed where Georgiana was, swelled with patronage of the Lamels, that they, when unable to lay hold of him, should respectfully grasp at the hem of his mantle, that they, when they could not bask in the glory of him the sun, should take up with the pale reflected light of the watery young moon his daughter, appeared quite natural, becoming, and proper. It gave him a better opinion of the discretion of the Lamels, than he had here to foreheld, as showing that they appreciated the value of the connection. So, Georgiana, repairing to her friend, Mr. Potsnap, went out to dinner, and to dinner, army at dinner, arm in arm, with Mrs. Potsnap, settling his obstinate head in his crevat and shirt colour, much as if he were performing under Pandian pipes in his own honour the triumphal march, see the conquering Potsnap comes, sound the trumpets, beat the drums. It was a trait in Mr. Potsnap's character, and in one form or other it will be generally seen to pervade the depths and shallows of Potsnapery, that he could not endure a hint of disparagement of any friend or acquaintance of his. How dare you, he would seem to say, in such a case, what do you mean? I have licensed this person. This person has taken out my certificate. Through this person you strike at me, Potsnap, the great, and it is not that I particularly care for the person's dignity, but that I do most particularly care for Potsnaps. Hence, if anyone in his presence had presumed to doubt the responsibility of the Lamels, he would have been mightily huffed. Not that anyone did, for veneering MP, was always the authority for their being very rich, and perhaps believed it, as indeed he might, if he chose, for anything he knew of the matter. Mr. and Mrs. Lamels' house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was but a temporary residence. It is done well enough, they informed their friends for Mr. Lamel when a bachelor, but it would not do now. So, they were always looking at palatial residences in the best situations, and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never quite concluding the bargain. Hereby they made for themselves a shining little reputation apart. People said, on seeing a vacant palatial residence, the very thing for the Lamels, and wrote to the Lamels about it, and the Lamels always went to look at it. But unfortunately it never exactly answered. In short, they suffered so many disappointments that they began to think it would be necessary to build a palatial residence. And hereby they made another shining reputation. Many persons of their acquaintance, becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own houses and envious of the non-existent Lamel structure. 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. The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street were pile thick and high over the skeleton upstairs, and if it ever whispered from under its load of upholstery, here I am in the closet. It was to very few years, and certainly never to Miss Potsnap's. What Miss Potsnap was particularly charmed with, next to the graces of her friend, was the happiness of her friend's married life. This was frequently their theme of conversation. "I am sure," said Miss Potsnap. "Mr. Lamel is like a lover, at least I should think he was." "Jorjiana darling," said Mrs. Lamel, holding up a forefinger, "take care." "Oh, my goodness me," exclaimed Miss Potsnap, reddening, "what have I said now?" "Alfred, you know," hinted Mrs. Lamel, playfully shaking her head, "you were never to say Mr. Lamel any more, Georgiana." "Oh, Alford then, I am glad it is no worse. I was afraid I had heard something shocking. I am always seeing something wrong to Marr." "To me, Georgiana, dearest?" "No, not to you, or you and that Marr, I wish you were." Mrs. Lamel bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend, which Miss Potsnap returned, as best she could. They sat at lunch, and Mrs. Lamel's own Budwe. "And so, dearest Georgiana, Alford, is like your notion of a lover." "I don't say that, Supronia," Georgiana replied, beginning to conceal her elbows. "I haven't any notion of a lover. The dreadful wretches that Marr brings up at places to torment me are not lovers. I only mean that Mr.," again, dearest Georgiana, "that, Alford, sounds much better, darling." "Loves you so. You always treat you with such delicate gallantry and attention. Now, don't he?" "And surely, my dear," said Mrs. Lamel, with a rather singular expression crossing her face, "I believe that he loves me fully as much as I love him." "Oh, what happiness?" exclaimed Miss Potsnap. "But, do you know, my Georgiana," Mrs. Lamel resumed presently, "that there is some things suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with Alford's tenderness?" "Good gracious, now! I hope not." "Doesn't it rather suggest," said Mrs. Lamel, archly, "that my Georgiana's little heart is?" "Oh, don't!" Miss Potsnap blushingly besought her, "Please don't! Are you sure you, Supronia, that I only praise Alford because he is your husband and so fond of you?" Supronia's glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised. "You are quite wrong, my love and your guess at my meaning. What I insinuated was, then my Georgiana's little heart was growing conscious of a vacancy." "No, no, no," said Georgiana. "I wouldn't have anybody say anything to me in that way, but I don't know how many thousand pounds." "In what way, my Georgiana?" inquired Mrs. Lamel, still smiling coolly with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised. "You know," returned poor little Miss Potsnap, "I think I should go out of my mind's room here, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if anybody did. It's enough for me to see how loving you and your husband are. That's a different thing. I couldn't bear to have anything of that sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to—do I have the person taken away and trampled upon?" "Ah, here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on the back of Saphronia's chair, and, as Miss Potsnap saw him, put one of Saphronia's wandering locks to his lips and waved a kiss from it towards Miss Potsnap. But is this about husbands and detestations?" inquired the captivating Alfred. "Why, they say," returned his wife, "that listeners never hear any good of themselves, though you, but pray, how long have you been here, sir?" This instant arrived, my own. "Then I may go on, though, if you had been here but a moment or two sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana." "Only if they were to be called praises at all, which I really don't think they were." explained Miss Potsnap in a flutter, for being so devoted to Saphronia. "Saphronia," murmured Alfred, "my life," and kissed her hand, in return for which she kissed his watch-chain. "But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope," said Alfred, drawing a seat between them. "Ask Georgiana, my soul," replied his wife. Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana. "Oh, it was nobody," replied Miss Potsnap. "It was nonsense." "But if you are determined to know Mr. inquisitive pit, as I suppose you are," said the happy and fond Saphronia, smiling. It was anyone who should venture to aspire to Georgiana. "Saphronia, my love," demonstrated Mr. Lammel, becoming graver, "you are not serious. Alfred, my love," returned his wife, "I dare say Georgiana was not, but I am." "Now this," said Mr. Lammel, "shows the accidental combinations there are in things. Could you believe, my onusst, that I came in here with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my lips?" "Of course I could believe it, Alfred," said Mrs. Lammel, "anything that you told me. No, dear one, and I, anything that you told me. How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying them. Now if the skeleton upstairs had taken that opportunity, for instance of calling out, here I am suffocating in the closet." "I give you my honour, my dear Saphronia, and I know what that is, love," said she. "You do, my darling, that I came into the room all but uttering young Fledgeby's name. Tell Georgiana, dear, ist about young Fledgeby." "Oh, no, don't, please don't," cried Ms. Pottsnap, putting her fingers in her ears, "I'd rather not." Mrs. Lammel laughed in her gayest manner, and removing her Georgiana's unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own at arm's length, sometimes near together, and sometimes wide apart, went on. "You must know," he would dearly beloved little goose, "at once upon a time there was a certain person called Young Fledgeby, and this young Fledgeby, who was an excellent family and rich, was known to two other certain persons, dearly attached to one another, and called Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammel. Though this young Fledgeby, being one night at the play, there sees, with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammel, a certain heroine called, "No, don't say Georgiana Pottsnap," peated that young lady almost in tears, "Please don't, don't, don't say somebody else, not Georgiana Pottsnap. Oh, don't, don't, don't." "No other," said Mrs. Lammel, laughing eerily, and full of affectionate bandishments, opening and closing Georgiana's arms, like a pair of compasses. Then my little Georgiana Pottsnap, so this young Fledgeby goes to that Alfred Lammel, and says, "Oh, please don't," Georgiana, as if the supplication were being squeezed out of her by powerful compression, "I still hate him for saying it." "I was saying, 'What's my dear?'" laughed Mrs. Lammel, "Oh, I don't know what he said." cried Georgiana wildly, "But I hate him, all the same, for seeing it." "My dear," said Mrs. Lammel, always laughing in her most captivating way, "the poor fellow only says that he has stricken all of a heap." "Oh, what shall they have adieu?" interposed Georgiana, "Oh, my goodness, what a fool he must be!" and implores, to be asked to dinner and to make a fourth at the play another time. And so he dines tomorrow and goes to the opera with us. That's all, except my dear Georgiana. And what will you think of this? That he's infinitely shyer than you, and far more afraid of you than you ever were of anyone in all your days. In perturbation of mind, Ms. Podsnap still fumed and plucked at her hands a little, but could not help laughing at the notion of anybody's being afraid of her. With that advantage, Saphronia flattered her and rallied her more successfully, and then the insinuating Alfred flattered her and rallied her and promised that at any moment when she might require that service at his hands he would take Young Fudgeby out and trample on him. Thus it remained amicably understood that Young Fudgeby was to come to admire, and that Georgiana was to come to be admired; and Georgiana with the entirely new sensation in her breast of having that prospect before her, and with many kisses from her dear Saphronia in present possession, proceeded six feet one of discontented footmen, an amount of the article that always came for her when she walked home to her father's dwelling. The happy pair being left together, Mrs. Lamol said to her husband, "If I understand this girl, sir, your dangerous fascination, so produce some effect upon her, I mentioned the conquest in good time because I apprehend your scheme to be more important to you than your vanity." There was a mirror on the wall before them, and her eyes just caught him smirking in it. She gave the reflected image a look of the deepest disdain, and the image received it in the glass. At the moment they quietly eyed each other, as if they, the principals, had had no part in that expressive transaction. It may have been that Mrs. Lamol tried in some manner to excuse her conduct to herself, by depreciating the poor little victim of whom she spoke with acrimonious contempt. It may have been too that in this she did not quite succeed, for it is very difficult to resist confidence, and she knew she had Georgiana's. Any more were said between the happy pair, perhaps conspirators who have once established an understanding may not be over fond of repeating the terms and objects of their conspiracy. Next day came, came Georgiana, and came Fetchby. Georgiana had by this time seen a good deal of the house and its frequenters, as there was a certain handsome room with a billiard table in it, on the ground floor, eating out a backyard which might have been Mr. Lamol's office or library, but was called by neither name but simply Mr. Lamol's room, so it would have been hard for stronger female heads than Georgiana's to determine whether its frequenters were men of pleasure or men of business. Between the room and the men there were strong points of general resemblance, both were too gaudy, too slangy, too odorous of cigars, and too which given to horse flesh, the latter characteristic being exemplified in the room by its decorations and in the men by their conversation. High stepping-horses seemed necessary to all Mr. Lamol's friends, as necessary as their transaction of business, together in a gypsy way, at untimely hours of the morning and evening, and in rushes and snetches. There were friends who seemed to be always coming and going across the channel, on errands about the boss, and Greek, and Spanish, and India, and Mexican, and par, and premium, and discount in three quarters and seven eighths. There were other friends who seemed to be always lolling and lounging, in and out of the city, on questions of the boss, and Greek, and Spanish, and India, and Mexican, and par, and premium, and discount, and three quarters and seven eighths. They were all feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose, and they all ate and drank a great deal, and made bets in eating and drinking. They all spoke of sums of money, and only mentioned the sums and left the money to be understood as five and forty thousand Tom, or two hundred and twenty-two, on every individual share in the lot Joe. There seemed to divide the world into two classes of people, people who were making enormous fortunes, and people who were being enormously ruined. They were always in a hurry, and yet seemed to have nothing tangible to do, except a few of them, these, mostly asthmatic and thick-lipped, who were forever demonstrating to the rest with gold pencil cases which they could hardly hold, because of the big rings and their forefingers, how money was to be made. Lastly, they all swore at their grooms, and the grooms were not quite as respectful or complete as other men's grooms, seeming somehow to fall short of the groom-point, as their masters fell short of the gentleman-point. Young Fetchby was none of these. Young Fetchby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek compounded of the peach, and the red, red, red, wall on which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim, as enemies would have said, "lanky," and prone to self-examination in the articles of Whisker and Mustache. While feeling for the Whisker that he anxiously expected, Fetchby underwent remarkable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along the whole scale, from confidence to despair. 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 JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. There were times when he started, as exclaiming, "By Jupiter, here it is at last." There were other times when, being equally depressed, he would be seen to shake his head and give up hope. To see him at those periods leaning on a chimney-piece, like us on an urn containing the ashes of his ambition, was a cheek that would not sprout upon the hand on which that cheek had forced conviction was a distressing sight. Not so was Fetchby seen on this occasion, a raid in superb raiment with his upper hat under his arm. He concluded his self-examination, hopefully awaiting the arrival of Miss Pottsnap, and talked small talk with Mrs. Lamel. In facetious homage to the smallness of his talk, and jerky nature of his manners, Fetchby's familiars had agreed to confer upon him, behind his back, the honorary title of Fascination Pledgeby. "Warm weather, Mrs. Lamel," said Fascination Pledgeby. Mrs. Lamel thought it scarcely as warm as it had been yesterday. "Perhaps not," said Fascination Pledgeby with great quickness of rapporte, "that I expect it will be devilish warm tomorrow." He threw off another little scintillation. "Been out today, Mrs. Lamel?" Mrs. Lamel answered. "For a short drive." "Some people," said Fascination Fetchby, "are accustomed to take long drives, but it generally appears to me that if they make him too long, they overdo it." Being in such feather, he might have surpassed himself in his next sally, had not Miss Pottsnap been announced. Mrs. Lamel flew to embrace her darling little Georgie, and when the first transports were over, presented Mr. Fetchby. Mr. Lamel came on the scene last, for he was always late, and so were the frequenters, always late, all hands being bound to be made late, by private information about the boss, and Greek, and Spanish, and India, and Mexican, and Parn, Premium, and discount, and three quarters and seven-eighths. A handsome little dinner was served immediately, and Mr. Lamel sat sparkling at his end of the table with his servant behind his chair, and his ever lingering doubts about the subject of his wages behind himself. Mr. Lamel's utmost powers of sparkling were in requisition today. For Fascination Fetchby and Georgie Anna not only struck each other speechless, but struck each other into astonishing attitudes. Georgie Anna, as she sat face in Fetchby, making such efforts to conceal her elbows as were totally incompatible with the use of an eye and fork; and Fetchby, as he sat face in Georgie Anna, avoiding her countenance by every possible device, and betraying the discomposure of his mind and feeling for his whiskers with his spoon, his wine-glass, and his bread. So, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lamel had to prompt, and this is how they prompted. "Georgie Anna," said Mr. Lamel, low and smiling, and sparkling all over like a harlequin, "you are not in your usual spirits. Why are you not in your usual spirits, Georgie Anna?" Georgie Anna faltered that she was much the same as she was in general; she was not aware of being different; and not aware of being different, which ordered Mr. Alfred Lamel. "You, oh my dear Georgie Anna, who are always so natural and unconstrained with us, who are such a relief from the crowd that are all alike, who are the embodiment of gentleness, simplicity, and reality." Ms. Pottsnap looked at the door as if she entertained confused thoughts of taking refuge from these compliments in flight. "Now, I will be judged," said Mr. Lamel, raising his voice a little, "by, my friend, Fledgebee." "Oh, don't," Ms. Pottsnap faintly ejaculated when Mrs. Lamel took the prompt book. "I beg your pardon, Alfred, my dear, but I cannot part with Mr. Fledgebee quite yet. You must wait for him a moment. Mr. Fledgebee and I are engaged in a personal discussion." "Fledgebee must have conducted it on his side with immense art, for no appearance of uttering one syllable had escaped him." "A personal discussion saphronia, my love. What discussion? Fledgebee? I am jealous. What discussion, Fledgebee?" "Shall I tell him, Mr. Fledgebee?" asked Mrs. Lamel. Trying to look as if he knew anything about it, fascination replied, "Yes, tell him." "We were discussing, then," said Mrs. Lamel, "if you must know, Alfred, where the Mr. Fledgebee was in his usual flow of spirits." "Why, that is the very point, Saphronia, that Georgiana and I were discussing as to herself. And what did Fledgebee say?" "Oh, her likely things, sir, that I am going to tell you everything and be told nothing. What did Georgiana say?" "Jordiana said she was doing her usual justice to herself today, and I said she was not." "Precisely," exclaimed Mrs. Lamel, "what I said to Mr. Fledgebee." "Still, it wouldn't do. They would not look at one another. No, not even when the sparkling host proposed that the quartet should take an appropriately sparkling glass of wine." Georgiana looked from her wine glass at Mr. Lamel, and at Mrs. Lamel, but miteened, couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't look at Mr. Fledgebee. Fascination looked from his wine glass at Mrs. Lamel, and at Mr. Lamel, but miteened, couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't look at Georgiana. 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. Come and explore 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. More prompting was necessary. Cupid must be brought up to the mark. The manager had put him down in the bill for the part, and he must play it. "So throne, my dear," said Mr. Lamel, "I don't like the colour of your dress." "I appeal," said Mrs. Lamel, "to Mr. Fledgeby." "And I," said Mr. Lamel, "to Georgiana." "Jorgie, my love," remarked Mrs. Lamel aside of her dear girl, "I rely upon you not to go over to the opposition. Now, Mr. Fledgeby." "Fascination wished to know if the colour were not called Rosecolour." "Yes," said Mr. Lamel, "actually he knew everything. It was really Rosecolour. Fascination took Rosecolour to mean the colour of roses. In this he was very warmly supported by Mr. Mrs. Lamel." Fascination had heard the term "Queen of Flowers" applied to the Rose. Similarly, it might be said that the dress was the Queen of Dresses. Very happy Fledgeby from Mr. Lamel. Not the standing fascination's opinion was that we all had our eyes, or at least a large majority of us, and that—and his father opinion was several ends—was nothing beyond them. "Oh, Mr. Fledgeby," said Mrs. Lamel, "to desert me in that way. Oh, Mr. Fledgeby, to abandon my poor dear injured Rose, and declare for blue." "Victory, victory," cried Mr. Lamel. "Your dress is condemned, my dear. But what?" said Mrs. Lamel, stealing her affectionate hand towards her dear girls. "What does Georgie say?" She says, replied Mr. Lamel, interpreting for her, and that in her eyes you look well in any colour, Severnia, and that if she had expected to be embarrassed by so pretty a compliment as she has received, she would have worn another colour herself. Though I told her, in reply, that it would not have saved her for whatever colour she had worn would have been Fledgeby's colour, but what does Fledgeby say? He says, replied Mrs. Lamel, interpreting for him, and patting the back of her dear girl's hand, as if it were Fledgeby who was patting it, that it was no compliment, but a little natural act of homage that he couldn't resist, and, expressing more feeling as if it were more feeling on the part of Fledgeby, he is right, he is right. Still, no, not even now, would they look at one another, seeming to nash his sparkling teeth, studs, eyes, and buttons all at once, Mr. Lamel secretly bent a dark frown on the two, expressive of an intense desire to bring them together by knocking their heads together. "Have you heard this opera of tonight, Fledgeby?" he asked, stopping very short, to prevent himself from running on and to confound you. "Why, no, not exactly," said Fledgeby, "in fact, I don't know a note of it." "Neither do you know it, Georgie," said Mrs. Lamel. "N-new!" replied Georgiana faintly, under the sympathetic coincidence. "Why, then?" said Mrs. Lamel, charmed by the discovery which flowed from the premises, "you neither of you know it, oh, how charming!" Even the Craven Fledgeby felt that time was now come when he must strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs. Lamel and partly to the circumambient air, "I consider myself very fortunate in being reserved by—" As he stopped dead, Mr. Lamel, making that gingerous bush of his whiskers to look out of, offered him the word, in destiny. "No, I wasn't going to say that," said Fledgeby, "I was going to say fate, and consider very fortunate that fate has written in the book which is its own property, that I should go to that opera for the first time under the memorable circumstances of going with Miss Potsnap." To which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one another and addressing the tablecloth, "Thank you, but I generally go as no one but you as Fledge, and I like that very much." Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr. Lamel let Miss Potsnap out of the room as if he were opening her cage door and Mrs. Lamel followed. Coffee being presently served upstairs, he kept a watch on Fledgeby until Miss Potsnap's cup was empty, and then directed him with his finger, as if that young gentleman were a slow retriever, to go and fetch it. This fate he performed, not only without failure, but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Potsnap that green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Potsnap unintentionally threw him out by faltering, "Oh, is it indeed? How does it act?" But he was not prepared to elucidate. The carriage announced, Mrs. Lamel said, "Don't, mind me, Mr. Fledgeby, my skirts and cloak occupy both my hems, take Miss Potsnap." And he took her, and Mrs. Lamel went next, and Mr. Lamel went last, savagely following his little flock, like a drover. But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box of the opera, and there he and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and Georgiana in the following ingenious and skilful manner. They sat in this order. Mrs. Lamel, fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana, Mr. Lamel. Mrs. Lamel made leading remarks to Fledgeby, only requiring monosyllabic replies, "Mr. Lamel did the like with Georgiana." At times, Mrs. Lamel would lean forward to address Mr. Lamel to this purpose. Alfred, my dear, Mr. Fledgeby very justly says, apropos of the last scene, that true constancy would not require any such stimulant as the stage deems necessary. To which Mr. Lamel would reply, "I, Sifronia, my love, but as Georgiana has observed to me the lady had no sufficient reason to know the state of the gentleman's affections. To which Mrs. Lamel would rejoin, very true, Alfred, but Mr. Fledgeby points out this, to which Alfred would demure." And out at Lays Sifronia, but Georgiana, a cukly, remarks that, "Through this device, the two young people conversed at great length, and committed themselves to a variety of delicate sentiments, without having once opened a lips, save to say yes or no, and even that, not to one another." She took his leave of Miss Pott's step at the carriage door, and the Lamel's dropped her own home, and on the way Mrs. Lamel archly rallied her in her fond and protective manner by staying at intervals, "Oh, little Georgiana, little Georgiana!" Which was not much, but the tone added, "You have enslaved, your Fledgeby." And thus the Lamel's got home at last, and the lady sat down moody and weary, looking at her dark lord engaged in a deed of violence with the bottle of soda-water, as though he were ringing the neck of some unlucky creature and pouring its blood down his throat. As he wiped his dripping whiskers in an oge-ish way, he met her eyes, and pausing, said, with no very gentle voice, "Well, what's such an absolute booby necessary to the purpose?" "I know what I'm doing, isn't it such a dolt, as you suppose?" "A genius, perhaps." "You sneer, perhaps, and you take a lofty air upon yourself, perhaps. But I tell you this, when that young fellow's interest is concerned, he holds as tight as a horse leech. When money is in question with that young fellow, he is a match for the devil. Is he a match for you? He is, or is as good a one as you thought me for you. He has no quality of youth in him, but such as you have seen today. Match him upon money, and you touch no booby then. He really is a dolt, I suppose, in other things. But it answers his one purpose very well. Has she money in her own right in any case? I, she has money in her own right in any case. You have done so well today, Saphronia, that I answer the question, though you know I object to any such questions. You have done so well today, Saphronia, that you must be tired, get to bed. End of Book 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Mercury Prompting Fetchby deserved Mr. Alfred Lamel's eulogym. He was the meanest Kerr existing, with a single pair of legs, and instinct, a word we all clearly understand, going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanest on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two. The father of this young gentleman had been a money-lender, who had transacted professional business with the mother of this young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast dark anti-chambers of the present world to be born. The lady, a widow, being unable to pay the money-lender, married him, and in due course Fetchby was summoned out of the vast dark anti-chambers to come and be presented to the registered general. Rather a curious speculation how Fetchby would otherwise have disposed of his leisure until doomsday. Fetchby's mother offended her family by marrying Fetchby's father. It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you. Fetchby's mother's family had been very much offended with her for being poor, and broke with her for becoming comparatively rich. Fetchby's mother's family was the Snigsworth family. She had even the high honor to be cousin to Lord Snigsworth, so many times removed that the noble Earl would have had no compunction in removing her one time more and dropping her clean outside the cousinly pale, but cousin for all that. Among her pre-matrimonial transactions with Fetchby's father, Fetchby's mother had raised money of him at a great disadvantage on a certain reversionary interest. The reversion, falling in soon after they were married, Fetchby's father laid hold of the cash for his separate use and benefit. This led to subjective differences of opinion, not to say objective interchanges of bootjacks, backgammon boards, and other such domestic missiles between Fetchby's father and Fetchby's mother, and those led to Fetchby's mother spending as much money as she could and to Fetchby's father doing all he couldn't to restrain her. Fetchby's childhood had been, in consequence, a stormy one, but the winds and the waves had gone down in the grave and Fetchby flourished alone. He lived in chambers in the Albany, did Fetchby, and maintained a spruce appearance, but his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from the grindstone, and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed anything, be sure that Fetchby had his tools at the grindstone, and turned it with a wary eye. Mr. Alfred Lammel came round to the Albany to breakfast with Fetchby. Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashes of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china, bought a secondhand bargain. "What do you think of Georgiana?" asked Mr. Lammel. "Why, I'll tell you," said Fetchby, very deliberately, "and do, my boy." "You'll misunderstand me," said Fetchby. "I don't mean I'll tell you that. I mean I'll tell you something else." "Tell me anything, old fellow." "Ah, but there you must understand me again," said Fetchby. "I mean I tell you nothing." Mr. Lammel sparkled at him, but frowned at him too. Look here. 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. Buy 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. Sir Fudgeby, you're deep and you're ready. Whether I am deep or not, never mind, I am not ready, but I can do one thing, Lammo. I can hold my tongue, and I intend always doing it. You are a long-headed fellow, Fudgeby. Maybe or may not be. If I am a short-tongued fellow, it may amount to the same thing. Now, Lammo, I am never going to answer questions. My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world. Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what they seem. I saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster Hall. Questions put to him seemed the simplest in the world, but turned out to be anything rather than that, after he had answered him. Very well. Any should have held his tongue. If it held his tongue, he would have kept out of scrapes that he got into. If I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject of my question. Mark Lammo, darkening. "Now, Lammo," said Fudgeby, calmly feeling for his whisker, "it won't do. I won't be led on into a discussion. I can't manage a discussion, but I can manage to hold my tongue." Then, Mr. Lammo fell back upon propitiation. "I should think you could. Why, when these fellows are a quaintant drink, can you drink with them? The more talkative they get, the more silent you get. The more they let out, the more you keep in." "I don't object, Lammo," returned Fudgeby with an internal chuckle, "to being under ill, and, though I object to being questioned, that certainly is the way I do it." "And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, one of us ever know what a single venture of yours is. And none of you ever will from me, Lammo," replied Fudgeby, with another internal chuckle, "that certainly is the way I do it." "Why, of course it is, I know." He rejoined Lammo, with a flourish of frankness and a laugh, and, stretching out his hands as if to show the universe a remarkable man in Fudgeby. If I hadn't known it of my Fudgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of advantage to my Fudgeby, ah, remarked fascination, shaking his head slyly, "that I am not to be got at, in that way. I am not vain. At sort of vanity don't pay, Lammo. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue, them all." Alfred Lammo pushed his plate away, no great sacrifice under the circumstances of their being so little in it. thrust his hands and his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fudgeby in silence. Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and made that bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence. Then he slowly broke silence, and slowly said, "What the devil is this fellow about this morning?" "Now, look here, Lammo," said fascination, Fudgeby, with the meanest of twinkles and his meanest of eyes, which were too near together, by the way. "Look here, Lammo. I am very well aware that I didn't show to advantage last night, and that you and your wife, who I consider, is a very clever woman and an agreeable woman, did. I am not calculated to show to advantage under that sort of circumstances. I know very well you too did show to advantage, and managed, capitaly. But don't you on that account come talking to me, as if I was your doll and puppet, because I am not?" "And all this," cried Alfred, after studying with a look, the meanest that was feigned to have the meanest help, and yet was so mean as to turn upon it, "all this because of one simple natural question. You should have waited till I thought proper to say something about it of myself. I don't like your coming over me with your Georgianus, as if you was a proprietor and mine too." "Well, when you are in the gracious mind to say anything about it of yourself," retorted Lammo, prayed, "I have done it. I have said you managed capitaly. You and your wife both. If you go on managing capitaly, I go on doing my part. Only don't crow. I crow!" exclaimed Lammo, shrugging his shoulders. "Or," pursued the other, "or take it into your head that people are your puppets, because they don't come out to advantage at the particular moments when you do, with the existence of a very clever and agreeable wife. All the rest keep on doing, and let Mrs. Lammo keep on doing. Now, I have held my tongue when I thought proper, and I have spoken when I thought proper, and there is an end of that. And now the question is," proceeded Fledgeby, with the greatest reluctance, "will you have another egg?" "No, I won't," said Lammo shortly. "Perhaps you are right, and will find yourself better without it," replied Fascination, in greatly improved spirit. "To ask you if you'll have another Russia would be unmeaning flattery, if it would make you thirsty all day. Will you have some more bread and butter?" "No, I won't," repeated Lammo. "Then I will," said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort for the sound sake, but there was a cheerful, cogent consequence of the refusal. For if Lammo had applied himself again to the loaf, it would have been so heavily visited, in Fledgeby's opinion, as to demand abstinence from bread on his part for the remainder that may at least, if not for the whole of the next. But that this young gentleman, for he was but three and twenty, combined with the miserly vice of an old man, any of the open-handed vices of a young one, was a moot point, so very honourably did he keep his own counsel. He was sensible of the value of appearances as an investment, and liked to dress well, but he drove a bargain for every moveable about him, from the coat on his back to the china on his breakfast table, and every bargain by representing somebody's ruin, or somebody's loss, acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a part of his avarice to take, within narrow bounds, long odds at places. If he won, he drove harder bargains; if he lost, he half-starved himself, until next time. Why money should be so precious to an ass, too dull, and mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the ass, who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky, but three letters, L.S.D., not luxury, sensuality, disalluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters. Your concentrated fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated ass in money-breeding. Versonation fledged be feigned to be a young gentleman living on his means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-broken line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways. His circle of familiar acquaintance, from Mr. Lammel round, all had a touch of the outlaw, as to their rovings in the merry greenward of jobbery forest, lying on the outskirts of the share-market and the stock exchange. "I suppose you, Lammel," said Fledgerby, eating his bread and butter, "always did go in for a female society." "Always," replied Lammel, glooming considerably under his late treatment, "came natural to you, eh?" said Fledgerby. "The sex were pleased to like me, sir," said Lammel, saltily, but with the air of a man who had not been able to help himself. "Maid a pretty good thing of marrying, didn't you?" said Fledgerby. The other smiled, an ugly smile, and tapped one tap upon his nose. "My late governor made a mess of it," said Fledgerby. "But your—is the right name, Georgina, or Georgiana?" "Georgiana." "I was thinking, yesterday. I didn't know there was such a name. I thought it must end in Ena. Why? Why? You play, if you can, the concertina, you know?" replied Fledgerby, meditating very slowly, "and you have—when you catch it—the scarletina—and you can come down from a balloon in a parish—no, you can't do. Well, say, Georgiut, I mean, Georgiana. You were going to remark of Georgiana," Lammel moodily hinted, after waiting in vain. "I was going to remark of Georgiana, sir," said Fledgerby, not at all pleased to be reminded of his having forgotten it. "That she don't seem to be violent, don't seem to be of the pitching-in order." "She has the gentleness of the dove, Mr. Fledgerby." "Of course, you'll say so," replied Fledgerby, sharpening, the moment his interest was touched by another. "But, you know, the real lookout is this. What I say—not what you say—I say, having my late governor and my late mother in my eye, that Georgiana don't seem to be of the pitching-in order." The respected Mr. Lammel was a bully—by nature and by usual practice. Perceiving as Fledgerby's affronts cumulated that conciliation by no means answered the purpose here, he now directed a scowling look into Fledgerby's small eyes for the effect of the opposite treatment. Satisfied by what he saw there, he burst into a violent passion and struck his hand upon the table, making the china ring and dance. "You are a very offensive fellow, sir," cried Mr. Lammel, rising. "You are a highly offensive scoundrel. What do you mean by this behaviour?" "I say," demonstrated Fledgerby, "don't break out. You are a very offensive fellow, sir," repeated Mr. Lammel. "You are a highly offensive scoundrel." 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'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. "I say, you know," urged Fudgeby, quailing. "Why, you, course and vulgar, vagabond," said Mr. Lammel, looking fiercely about him. "If your servant was here to give me sixpence of your money to get my boots cleaned afterwards, for you are not worth the expenditure, I'd kick you." "No, you wouldn't," pleaded Fudgeby. "I am sure you'd think better of it." "I tell you what was stuff, Fudgeby," said Lammel, advancing on him. "Since you presumed to contradict me, I'll assert myself a little. Give me your nose." Fudgeby covered it with his hand instead, and said, retreating, "I beg, you won't." "Give me your nose, sir," repeated Lammel. Still covering that feature and backing, Mr. Fudgeby reiterated, apparently with a severe cold in his head. "I beg, I beg, you won't." "And this fellow," exclaimed Lammel, stopping and making the most of his chest, "this fellow presumes on my having selected him, out of all young fellows I know, for an advantageous opportunity. This fellow presumes on my having in my desk round the corner, his dirty note of hand for a wretched sum payable on the occurrence of a certain event which a vet can only be of my and my wife's bringing about. This fellow, Fudgeby, presumes to be impertinent to me. Lammel, give me your nose, sir." "No, stop, I beg your pardon," said Fudgeby with humility. "What do you say, sir?" demanded Mr. Lammel, claiming too furious to understand. "I beg your pardon," repeated Fudgeby. "Repit your words louder, sir. Just indignation of a gentleman has sent the blood boiling to my head. I don't hear you." "I say," repeated Fudgeby, with laborious explanatory politeness, "I beg your pardon." Mr. Lammel paused. "As a man of honour," said he, throwing himself into a chair, "I am disarmed." Mr. Fudgeby also took a chair, though less demonstratively, and by slow approaches removed his hand from his nose. Some natural difference assailed him as to blowing it, so shortly after it's having assumed a personal and delicate, not-to-say public, character, but he overcame his scruples by degrees, and modestly took that liberty under an implied protest. "Lammel?" he said, sneakingly, when that was done. "I hope we are friends again?" "Mr. Fudgeby," returned Lammel, "say no more." "I must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable," said Fudgeby, "but I never intended it." "Say no more, say no more," Mr. Lammel repeated in a magnificent tone. "Give me your," Fudgeby started, "hand." They shook hands, and on Mr. Lammel's part, in particular, they ensued great geniality. For he was quite as much of a dusted as the other, and had been in equal danger of falling into the second place for good, when he took heart, just in time, to act upon the information conveyed to him by Fudgeby's eye. "The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant machinations were to be kept at work by Mr. Mrs. Lammel. Love was to be made for Fudgeby, and conquest was to be ensured to him. He, on his part, very humbly admitting his defects as to the softer social arts, and in treating to be backed to the utmost by his two able coagitors." Little rekt, Mr. Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his young person. He regarded her as safe within the temple of Podsnapery, hiding the fullness of time when she, Georgiana, should take him, Fitzpodsnap, who, with all his worldly goods, should her endow. It would call a blush into the cheek of his standard young person, to have anything to do with such matters, safe to take as directed, and with worldly goods, as per settlement, to be endowed. Who giveeth this woman to be married to this man? I, Podsnap, perish the daring thought that any smaller creation should come between. It was a public holiday, and Fudgeby did not recover his spirits or his usual temperature of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the city in the holiday afternoon he walked against a living stream, setting out of it, and thus when he turned into the precincts of St. Mary X, he found a prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow overhanging plaster-fronted house, at which he stopped, was quiet, too. The blinds were all drawn down, and the inscription "Pubsi" and "Co" seemed to doze in the counting-house window on the ground floor, giving on the sleepy street. Fudgeby knocked and rang, and Fudgeby rang and knocked, but no one came. Fudgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at the house windows, but nobody looked down at Fudgeby. He got out of temper, crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the house bell as if it were the house's nose, and he were taking a hint from his late experience. His ear at the key-hole seemed then, at last, to give him assurance, at something stirred within. His eye at the key-hole seemed to confirm his ear, for he angrily pulled the house's nose again, and pulled, and pulled, and continued to pull, until a human nose appeared in the dark doorway. "Now, you, sir," cried Fudgeby. "These are nice games." He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt and wide of pocket. A venerable man, bald and shining at the top of his head, and with long grey hair flowing down at its sides and mingling with his beard. A man who, with a graceful Eastern action of homage, bent his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms downward, as if to deprecate the wrath of a superior. "One of you being up to," said Fudgeby, storming at him, "generous Christian master," urged the Jewish man, "it being holiday I looked for no one." "Holliday be blowed," said Fudgeby, entering. "What have you got to do with holidays?" "Shut the door." With his former action, the old man obeyed. In the entry hung his rusty, large-brimmed, low-crowned hat, as long out of date as his coat. In the corner near it stood his staff, no walking-stick but a veritable staff. Fudgeby turned into the counting-house, perched himself on a business stool, and cocked his hat. There were light-boxes on shelves in the counting-house, and strings of mock-beats hanging up. There were samples of cheap clocks and samples of cheap vases of flowers, foreign toys, all. Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head, and one of his legs dangling, the youth of Fudgeby hardly contrasted to advantage with the age of the Jewish man, as he stood with his bare-haired bowed and his eyes, which he only raised in speaking, on the ground. His clothing was worn down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry. But though he looked shabby, he did not look mean. Now, Fudgeby, though not shabby, did look mean. "You have not told me what you were up to, sir," said Fudgeby, scratching his head with the brim of his hat. "Sir, I was breathing the air, in the cellar that you can hear, on the house-top, upon myself, at a way of doing business." "Sir," the old man represented with a grave and patient air, "there must be two parties to the transaction of business, and the holiday has left me alone." "Ah, can't be buyer in cellar, too. That's what the Jews say, ain't it?" "At least we say truly, if we say so," answered the old man with a smile. "Your people need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough," remarked Fudgeby. "Sir, there is," returned the old man with quiet emphasis, "too much untruth among all denominations of men." Rather dashed, Fudgeby took another scratch at his intellectual head with his hat to gain time for rallying. "For instance," he resumed, as though it were he who had spoken last, "who but you and I ever heard of a poor Jew?" "The Jews," said the old man, raising his eyes on the ground with his former smile, "they hear of poor Jews often, and are very good to them." "Bother that," returned Fudgeby. "You know what I mean. You persuade me, if you could, that you would a poor Jew. I wish you'd confess how much you really did make out of my late governor. I should have a better opinion of you." The old man only bent his head and stretched out his hands as before. "Don't go on posturing like a deaf and dumb school," said the ingenious Fudgeby, "and express yourself like a Christian, or as nearly as you can." "I had had sickness and misfortunes, and were so poor," said the old man, "as hopelessly to owe the father principal an interest. The son inheriting was so merciful as to forgive me both, and place me here." He made a little gesture as though he kissed the hem of an imaginary garment worn by the noble youth before him. It was humbly done, but picturesquely. 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 was not a basing to the doer. "You won't say more, I see," said Fledgeby, looking at him as if he would like to try the effect of extracting a double tooth or two. And so it's of no use, might putting it to you. "But confess this, Ryan. Who believes you to be poor now?" "No one," said the old man. "There. You're right," ascended Fledgeby. "No one," repeated the old man with a grave slow wave of his head, all scouted as a fable. "Were I to say, this little, fancy business is not mine? With a live sweep of his easily turning hand around him to comprehend the various objects on the shelves. It is the little business of a Christian young gentleman who places me his servant in trust and charge here and whom I am accountable for every single beat. They would laugh. When, in the larger money business, I tell the borrowers, "I sail, chap," interposed Fledgeby, "I help you mind what you do tell them." "Sir, I tell them no more than I am about to repeat. When I tell them, I cannot promise this. I cannot answer for the other. I must see my principle. I have not the money. I am a poor man, and it does not rest with me. They are so unbelieving and so impatient that they sometimes curse me in Jehovah's name." "That's juiced good, that is," said Fassination Fledgeby. "And, at other times, they say, 'Can it never be done without these tricks, Mr. Raya?' Come, come, Mr. Raya, we know the arts of your people, my people. If the money is to be lent, fetch it, fetch it, if it is not to be lent, keep it, and say so. They never believe me." "That's all right," said Fassination Fledgeby. "They say, 'We know, Mr. Raya, we know, we have but to look at you, and we know.' 'Oh, a good and are you for the post,' thought Fledgeby, and a good and was I to mark you out for it. I may be slow, but I am precious sure." Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself at any scrap of Mr. Fledgeby's breath, lest it should tend to put his servants' price up. But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with his head bowed and his eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his baldness, an inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat skirt, an inch of his hat-brim, an inch of his walking staff would be to relinquish hundreds of pounds. 'Look here, Raya,' said Fledgeby, mollified by these self-approving considerations, 'I want to go a little more into buying up queer bills. Look out in that direction.' 'Sir, it shall be done.' Castying my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business pays pretty fairly, and I am game for extending it. I like to know people's affairs likewise, so look out. 'Sir, I will promptly,' pointed him out in the right quarters that you'll buy queer bills by the lump, by the pound weight of that's all. Supposing you see your way to a fair chance on looking over the parcel, and there's one thing more. Come to me with the books for periodical inspection as usual at eight on Monday morning.' Raya drew some folding tablets from his breast, and noted it down. 'That's all I wanted to say at the present time,' continued Fledgeby, in a grudging vein as he got off the stool, 'except that I wish you'd take the air where you can hear the bell or the knocker either one of the two are both. By the buy, how do you take the air at the top of the house? Do you stick your head out of a chimney pot?' 'Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.' 'To bury a money in, you'll dodge it.' 'A thum nails, space of garden, would hold the treasure a highberry master,' said Raya, 'twelve shillings a week. Even when they are, and hold man's wages, bury themselves.' 'I should like to know what you really are worth,' returned Fledgeby, with whom his growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very convenient fiction. 'Let's have a look at your garden on the tiles before I go,' the old man took a step back and hesitated. 'Tooly, sir, I have company there.' 'Have you, by George,' said Fledgeby, 'I suppose you happen to know whose premises these are.' 'Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.' 'Oh, I thought you might have ever looked at that,' retorted Fledgeby with his eyes and Raya's beard as he felt for his own. 'Having company on my premises, you know?' 'Come up and see the guests, sir. I hope for your admission that they can do no harm.' Passing him with a courteous reference, especially unlike any action Mr. Fledgeby could for his life have imparted to his own head and hands, the old man began to ascend the stairs. As he told on before, with his palm upon the stair rail, and his long black skirt, a very gabbardine, overhanging each successive step, he might have been the leader in some pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet's tomb. Not troubled by any such weak imagining, fascination Fledgeby merely speculated on the time of life at which his beard had begun, and thought once more what a good end you was for the part. Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low penthouse roof to the house top. Raya stood still, and, turning to his master, pointed out his guests. Lizzie Hexham and Jenny ran. For whom, perhaps, with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney stack, over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both poured over one book, both with attentive faces. Jenny, with the sharper, Nizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble flowers and evergreens completed the garden, and the encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys twirled their cows and flooded their smoke, rather as if they were bridling and fanning themselves and looking on in a state of airy surprise. Taking her eyes off the book to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Ren likewise became conscious, and said irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises. "Whoever you are, I can't get up because my back's bad and my legs are queer." "This is my master," said Ryan, stepping forward. "Don't look like anybody's master," observed Miss Ren do herself with the hitch of her chin and eyes. "This, sir," pursued the old man, "is a little dressmaker for little people." "Explain to the master, Jenny." "Dolls, that's all," said Jenny shortly. "Very difficult to fit to, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their wastes." Her friend, presumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie, and as industrious as virtuous, but that they both are, they are busy early and late, sir, early and late, and in by times, as on this holiday, they go to book learning. "Not much good to be got out of that," remarked fledged me. "Depends upon the person," croaked Miss Ren, snapping him up. "I made a acquaintance with my guests, sir," pursued the Jew with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, "through their coming here to buy of our damage and waste for Miss Jenny's millinery. Our waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her rosy-chicked little customers. They wear it in their hair, and on their boardresses, and even, so she tells me, are presented at court with it." "Ah," said Fudgeby, on whose intelligence this dull fancy made rather strong demands. "She's been buying that basket fill today, I suppose." "I suppose, yes," Miss Jenny interposed, "and paying for it, too, most likely." "Let's have a look at it," said the suspicious chief. Riah handed it to him. "How much for this now?" "Two precious silver shillings," said Miss Ren. Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fudgeby looked to him, a nod for each shilling. "Well," said Fudgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with his forefinger, "their price is not so bad. You've got good measure, Miss. What is it?" "Try, Jenny!" suggested that young lady with great calmness. "You've got good measure, Miss Jenny, but the price is not so bad. And you," said Fudge, returning to the other visitor, "do you buy anything here, Miss?" "No, sir." "Nor sell anything, neither, Miss." "No, sir." Looking a skew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her friends, and drew her friend down, so that she bent beside her on her knee. "We are thankful to come here for wrists," said Jenny. "You see, you don't know what the rest of this place is to us." 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 N.A. member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. "Does he, Lucy? It's a quiet and the air." "The quiet," repeated French people with a contemptuous turn of his head towards the city's roar, "and the air, eh?" With a poof at the smoke. "Ah," said Jenny, "but it's so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky from which the wind comes, and you feel as if you were dead." The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight transparent hand. "How do you feel when you're dead?" asked Fedgeby, much perplexed. "Oh, so tranquil!" cried the little creature, smiling. "Oh, so peaceful and so thankful. And do we other people who are alive, crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the closed dark streets, and you seem to pity them so. And such a china's fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you." Her eyes fell on the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked on. "Why, it was only just now," said the little creature, pointing at him, "that I fancied. I saw him come out of his grave. It all out of that little door, so bent and worn, and then he took his breath and stood upright and looked all round him at the sky, and a wind blew upon him, and his life down in the dark was over, till he was called back to life." She added, looking round at Fedgeby with that lower look of sharpness. "Why did you call him back?" "He was long enough coming, anyhow," grumbled Fedgeby. "But you were not dead, you know," said Jenny Ren. "Get down to life!" Mr. Fedgeby seemed to think it rather a good suggestion, and with a nod turned round. As Riah followed to attend him down the stairs, the little creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone. "Don't be long gone. Come back and be dead." And still as they went down, they heard the little sweet voice more and more faintly, half-calling and half-singing, "Come back and be dead. Come back and be dead." When they got down into the entry, Fedgeby, pausing under the shadow of the broad old hat, and mechanically pausing the staff, said to the old man, "That's a handsome girl, at one of her senses, and as good as handsome," answered Riah. "At all events," observed Fedgeby with a dry whistle, "I hope she ain't bad enough to put any chap up to the fastenings and get the premises broken open. You look out. Keep your weather eye awake. Don't make any more acquaintances, however handsome. Of course, you always keep my name to yourself." "Sir assuredly I do. If they ask it, say it's pubsy, or say it's coe, or say it's anything you like, but what it is." His grateful servant, and whose race gratitude is deep, strong, and enduring, bowed his head, and actually did now put the hem of his coat to his lips, though so lightly that the wearer knew nothing of it. Thus fascination Fedgeby went his way, exulting in the artful cleverness, with which he had turned his thumb down on a june, and the old man went his different way upstairs. As he mounted, the call or song began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw the face of the little creature looking down out of a glory of her long, bright, rage and hair, and musically repeating to him like a vision. "Come up, and be dead. Come up, and be dead." End of book two, chapter five. Chapter six, riddle without an answer. Again Mr. Mortimer Lightwood and Mr. Eugene Rayburn sat together in the temple. This evening, however, they were not together in the place of business of the eminent solicitor, but in another dismal set of chambers facing it on the same second floor, on whose dungeon-like black outer door appeared the legend, private Mr. Eugene Rayburn, Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, Mr. Lightwood's officer's opposite. Appearances indicated that this establishment was a very recent institution. The white letters of the inscription were extremely white and extremely strong to the sense of smell. The complexion of the tables and chairs was, like Lady Tippins', a little too blooming to be believed in, and the carpets and floor cloth seemed to rush at the beholder's face in the unusual promenancy of their patterns. But the temple accustomed to tone down both the still life and the human life that has much to do with it would soon get the better of all that. "Well," said Eugene, on one side of the fire, "I feel terribly comfortable. I hope the upholsterer may do the same." "Why shouldn't he?" asked Lightwood on the other side of the fire. "To be sure," pursued Eugene, reflecting, "he is not in the secret our pecuniary affairs, so perhaps he may be in an easy frame of mind." "We shall pay him," said Mortimer. "Shall we really?" returned Eugene, indolently surprised. "You don't say so." "I mean to pay him Eugene for my part," said Mortimer in a slightly injured tone. "Ah, I mean to pay him too," retorted Eugene, "but then I mean so much that I don't mean." "Don't mean." 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. "There's so much that I only mean, and shall always only mean, and nothing more, my dear Mortimer. It's the same thing." His friend, lying back in his easy chair, watched him lying back in his easy chair as he stretched out his legs on the hearth rug, and said, with the amused look that Eugene Rayburn could always awaken in him without seeming to try or care. "Anyhow, your vagaries have increased the bill. Calls the domestic virtues of vagaries," exclaimed Eugene, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "There's very complete little kitchen of ours," said Mortimer, "in which nothing will ever be cooked. My dear, dear Mortimer," returned his friend, lazily lifting his head a little to look at him. "How often have I pointed out to you that its moral influence is the important thing?" "It's moral influence on this fellow," exclaimed Lightwood, laughing. "Do me the favor," said Eugene, getting out of his chair with much gravity, "to come and inspect that feature of our establishment which you rashly disparage." With that, taking up a candle, he conducted his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers, a little narrow room which was very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. "See?" said Eugene, "Minature of flower barrel, rolling pin, spice box, shelf of brown jars, shopping board, coffee mill, dresser elegantly furnished with crockery, sauce pans and pans, roasting jack, a charming kettle, an armory of dishcovers." "The moral influence of these objects inform me the domestic virtues may have an immense influence upon me—not upon you, for you are a hopeless case, but upon me. In fact, I have an idea that I feel the domestic virtues already forming. Do me the favor to step into my bedroom." "Secretary," you see, an abstruse set of solid mahogany pigeonholes, won for every letter of the alphabet. "To what use do I devote them?" "I receive a bill, say from Jones. I docket it neatly at the Secretary Jones, and I put it into pigeonhole J. It's the next thing to a receipt, and is quite a satisfactory to me. And I very much wish, Mortimer, sitting on his bed with the air of a philosopher lecturing a disciple. That my example might induce you to cultivate habits of punctuality and method, and by means of the moral influences which I have surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the domestic virtues. Mortimer laughed again with his usual commentaries of, "How can you be so ridiculous, Eugene, and what an absurd fellow you are?" But when his laugh was out, there was something serious, if not anxious, in his face. Despite that pernicious assumption of latitude and indifference which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to his friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at school, and at this hour, imitated him no less, admired him no less, loved him no less, than in those departed days. "Eugene," said he, "if I could find you in earnest for a minute, I would try to say an earnest word to you." "An earnest word," repeated Eugene, "the moral influences are beginning to work, stay on." "Well, I will," returned the other, though you are not earnest yet. "In this desire for earnestness," murmured Eugene with the air of one who was meditating deeply, "I trace the happy influences of the little flower barrel and the coffee mill, gratifying." "Eugene," resumed Mortimer, disregarding the light interruption, and laying a hand upon Eugene's shoulder as he mortimer stood before him seated on his bed. "You are withholding something from me?" Eugene looked at him, but said nothing. "All this first summer you have been withholding something from me. Before we entered on our boating vacation you were as bent upon it as I have seen you upon anything since we first rode together. But you cared very little for it when it came, often found at a time, a drag upon you, and were constantly away. Now, it was one enough half a dozen times, a dozen times, twenty times, to say to me in your own odd manner which I know so well and like so much, that your disappearances were precautions against our boring one another. But, of course, after a short while I began to know that they covered something. I don't ask what it is, as you have not told me, but the fact is so, say, is it not? I give you my word of honor, Mortimer," returned Eugene, after a serious pause of a few moments. "That's, I don't know. Don't know, Eugene, upon my soul. Don't know. I know less about myself than about most people in the world, and I don't know. You have some design in your mind? Have I? I don't think I have. At any rate, you have some subject of interest there which used not to be there. I really can't say," replied Eugene, shaking his head blankly after pausing again to reconsider. "At times I have thought, yes. At other times I have thought, no. Now, I have been inclined to pursue such a subject. Now I have felt that it was absurd and that it tired and embarrassed me. Absolutely, I can't say. Frankly and faithfully, I would, if I could." So, replying, he clapped a hand in his turn on his friend's shoulder as he rose from his seat upon the bed, and said, "You must take your friend as he is. You know what I am, my dear Mortimer? You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant. You know that at length I gave it up and declined to guess any more. Then how can I possibly give you the answer that I have not discovered? The old nursery of form runs riddle me, riddle me ree. Perhaps you can't tell me what this may be. My reply runs, "No, upon my life I can't." So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of this utterly careless Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer could not receive it as a mere evasion. Besides, it was given with an engaging ear of openness and of special exemption of the one friend he valued from his retless indifference. "A crumb, dear boy," said Eugene, "let us try the effect of smoking. If it enlightens me at all on this question, I will impart unreservedly." They returned to the room they had come from, and finding it heated opened a window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned out of this window smoking and looking down at the moonlight as it shone into the court below. "No enlightenment," presumed Eugene after certain minutes of silence, "I feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes." "If nothing comes," returned Mortimer, "nothing can come from it." "So I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there may be nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or..." Eugene stayed in for a moment with his hand on his arm. While he took a piece of earth from an old flower-part on the windowsill, and dexterously shot it at a little point of light opposite, having done which to his satisfaction, he said, "or, or injurious to anyone else." "How?" said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting it with great position at the former mark. "How injurious to anyone else?" "I don't know." "And?" said Eugene, taking, as he said the word another shot, "to whom else?" "I don't know." Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face. "Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law," said Eugene, attracted by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke, "stray into the court." They examined the doorposts of number one, seeking the name they want. Not finding it, at number one, they come to number two. On the hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting him on the hat, I smoke serenely and become absorbed in contemplation of the sky. Both the wanderers looked up towards the window, but, after interchanging a mutter or two, soon apply themselves to the doorposts below. There they seem to discover what they wanted, for they disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. "When they emerge," said Eugene, "you shall see me bring them both down," and so prepared two pellets for the purpose. He had not reckoned on their seeking his name on lightwards, but either the one or the other would seem to be in question, for now there came a knock at the door. "I am on duty tonight," said Mortimer, "stay away you are, Eugene." Requiring no persuasion, he stayed there, smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who knocked, until Mortimer spoke to him from within the room and touched him. Then, drawing in his head, he found the visitors to be young Charlie Hexam and the schoolmaster, both standing facing him and both recognized at a glance. "You recollect this young fellow, Eugene?" said Mortimer. "Let me look at him," returned Rayburn Cooley. "Oh, yes, yes, I recollect him." He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him by the chin, but the boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up his arm with an angry start. Laughingly, Rayburn looked to lightward for an explanation of his odd visit. He says he has something to say. "Surely, it must be to you, Mortimer." "So I thought, but he says no, he says it is to you." 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. "Yes, I do say so," interposed the boy. "In our main estate, what I want to say too, Mr. Eugene Viburn." Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he stood, Eugene looked on to badly headstone. With consummate indolence, he turned to Mortimer, inquiring. "And who may this other person be?" "I am Charles Exham's friend," said badly. "I am Charles Exham's schoolmaster." "My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners," returned Eugene. Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimney-piece at the side of the fire, and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel look, in its cold disdain of him as a creature of no worth. The schoolmaster looked at him, and that too was a cruel look, though of the different kind, that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it. Very remarkably, neither Eugene Viburn nor Bradley Headstone looked at all at the boy. Through the ensuing dialogue those two, no matter who spoke or who was addressed, looked at each other. There was some secret, sure perception between them, which set them against one another in all ways. "In some high respects, Mr. Eugene Viburn," said Bradley, answering him with pale and quivering lips, "an actual feelings of my pupils are stronger than my teaching." "In no respect, I dare say," replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar, though with a high on the hose of no importance. "You have my name very correctly." "Pray, what is yours?" "It kind of can send you much to know, but true," interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his mistake. "It does not concern me at all to know." "I can say, Schoolmaster," which is a most respectable title. "You are right, Schoolmaster." "It was not the dullest part of this gold in its galling of Bradley Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of in cautious anger. He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they quivered fast." "Mr. Eugene Viburn," said the boy, "I want a word with you. I have wanted it so much, or we have looked out your address in the book, and we have been in your office, and we have come from your office here." "You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster," observed Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. "I hope it may prove remunerative." "And I am glad to speak," pursued the boy, in presence of Mr. Lightwood, because it was too Mr. Lightwood that you ever saw, my sister. "For a mere moment," Rayburn turned his eyes aside from the Schoolmaster to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken, turned his face towards the fire and looked down into it. Similarly, he was through Mr. Lightwood that you ever saw again. For you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found you with her on the next day. Since then, you have seen my sister often. You have seen my sister oftener and oftener, and I want to know why." "Was this worthwhile, Schoolmaster?" murmured Eugene with the air of a disinterested advisor. "So much trouble for nothing. You should know best, but I think not." "I don't know, Mr. Rayburn," answered badly with his passion rising, "why you address me and don't you?" said Eugene. "Then I won't." He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity at the respectable right-hand clutching, the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it. Not another word did Eugene deem it worthwhile to utter; but stood leaning his head upon his hand, smoking and looking imperturbably at the chafing Bradley headstone with his clutching right hand, until Bradley was well-nigh mad. "Mr. Rayburn," proceeded the boy, "why not now we know this that I have charged upon you, but we know more. It is not yet come to my sister's knowledge that we have found it out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr. Edston and I, for more sister's education, and for it's been advised and overlooked by Mr. Edston, who is a much more competent authority. Whatever you might pretend to think as you smoke, then you could reduce if you tried. Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr. Lightwood? Why? We find that my sister is already being taught without our knowing it. We find that while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our schemes for her advantage, I, her brother, and Mr. Edston the most competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove that could be produced, she is woefully and willingly profiting by other schemes. "Hi, and taking pains too, for I know what such pains are, and so does Mr. Edston. Well, somebody pays for this, is a thought that naturally occurs to us. Who pays?" "We apply ourselves to find out, Mr. Lightwood, and we find that your friend, this Mr. Eugene Rayburn ear, pays." "Then I ask him, what right does he need to do it, and what does he mean by it, and how comes he to be taking such liberty without my consent? When I am raising myself in a scale of society by my own exertions and Mr. Edston's aid, and have no right to have any darkness cost upon my prospects or any irritation upon my respectability through my sister?" The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness, made it a poor one indeed. And yet badly headstone, used to the little audience of a school and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a kind of exaltation in it. "Now, I tell Mr. Eugene Rayburn," pursued the boy, forced into the use of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing men the first, "that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and that I request him to drop it all together. He is not to take it into his head that I am afraid of my sister's caring for him." As the boy sneered, the master sneered, and Eugene blew off the feathery ash again. "But I object to it, and that's enough. I am more important to my sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her. She knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now, I understand always very well, and so does Mr. Edston. My sister is an excellent girl. But she has some romantic notions, not about such things as your, Mr. Eugene Rayburns, but about the death of my father, and other members of that sort. Mr. Rayburn encourages those notions to make himself of importance, and so she thinks you ought to be grateful to him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now, I don't choose her to be grateful to him, or to be grateful to anybody but me, except Mr. Edston. And I tell Mr. Rayburn that if he don't take heed of what I say, it will be worse for her. Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of it worse for her." A pause ensued, in which the schoolmaster looked very awkward. "May I," a suggest, schoolmaster, said Eugene, removing his fast waning cigar from his lips to glance at it, "that you can now take your pupil away." "And, Mr. Lightwood," added the boy with a burning face under the flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention. "I hope you'll take notice of what I said to your friend, and of what your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr. Lightwood, for, as I have already mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister's company. But for you, we never should have seen him. Lord knows none of us ever wanted him, and any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now, Mr. Edstone, as Mr. Eugene Vayburn has been obliged to hear what I have to say, and couldn't help himself, and as I have said it out to the last word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go. "Go downstairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam," he returned. The boy, complying with an indignant look, and as much noise as he could make, swung out of the room, and Lightwood went to the window, and leaned there, looking out. "You think, me, you know more value than the dirt under your feet," said Bradley to Eugene, speaking in a carefully weighed and measured tone, or you could not have spoken at all. "I sure you, schoolmaster," replied Eugene, "I don't think about you." "That's not true," returned the other. "You know better." "That's course." 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 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. Eugene retorted, but you don't know better. "Mr. Rayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad, who has just gone out, could put you to shame in half a dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour. But you can throw him aside like an inferior. You can do as much by me. I have no doubt beforehand." "Possibly," remarked Eugene, "but I am more than a lad," said Bradley, with his clutching hand. "And I will be heard, sir." "As a schoolmaster," said Eugene, "you are always being heard, that ought to content you. But it does not content me," replied the other white with passion. "Do you suppose that a man informing himself for the duties I discharge, and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well, dismisses a man's nature?" "I suppose you," said Eugene, "and judging from what I see as I look at you, to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster." As he spoke, he tossed away the end of his cigar. "Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, I respect myself for being, but I have not devils for my pupils. For your teachers, I should rather say," replied Eugene, "Mr. Rayburn, a schoolmaster. Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone. As you justle his head, my good sir, your name cannot consent me. Now, what more?" "This more." "Oh, what a misfortune is mine," cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this. When a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself." He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself. Eugene Rayburn looked on at him as if he found it beginning to be rather an entertaining study. "Mr. Rayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part." "Come, schoolmaster," returned Eugene, with a languid approach to impatience as the other again struggle with himself. "Say what you have to say, and let me remind you that the door is standing open and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs. When I accompany that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of adding, as a man whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case you put him aside as a boy, that his instant is correct and right." Thus Bradley headstone, with great effort and difficulty. "Is that all?" "Arts Eugene." "No, sir," said the other, flushed and fierce. "I strongly support him in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection to your officiousness, and worse in what you have taken upon yourself to do for her." "Is that all?" asked Eugene. "No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister." "Are you a schoolmaster, as well as her brothers?" "Or perhaps you would like to be," said Eugene. It was a stab that the blood followed in its rush to Bradley headstone's face, as swiftly as if it had been dealt with a dagger. "What do you mean by that?" "It was as much as he could utter." "Unnatural ambition enough," said Eugene, coolly, "farbiot for me to say otherwise. The sister, who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps, is so very different from all the associations to which she had been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a very natural ambition." "Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr. Rayburn? That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning its schoolmaster, and seek to know nothing." "You reproach me with my origin," said Bradley headstone. "You cast insinuations at my bringing up, but I tell you, sir. I have worked my way onward, out of both, and in spite of both, and ever right, to be considered a better man than you, with better reasons for being proud." "How I can reproach you is what is not within my knowledge, or how I can cast stones that were never in my hand is a problem for the ingenuity of a schoolmaster to prove," returned Eugene, "is that all?" "No, sir." "If you suppose that boy who really will be tired of waiting," said Eugene politely. "If you suppose that boy to be friendly, Mr. Rayburn, you deceive yourself. I am his friend, and you shall find me so. And you will find him on the stairs." remarked Eugene. "You may have promised yourselves, sir, that you could do what you chose here, because you had to deal with a mere boy, an experienced, friendless, and unassisted, but I give you warning that this mean calculation is wrong. You have to do with a man, also. You have to do with me. I will support him, and, if need be, require reparation for him. My hand and heart are in this cause, and are open to him. And, quite a coincidence, the door is open." remarked Eugene. "I scorn your shifty evasions, and I scorn you," said the schoolmaster, "in the meanest of your nature. You revile me with the meanest of my birth. I hold you in contempt for it. If you are known profit by this visit, and act accordingly, you will find me as bitterly and earnest against you as I could be, if I deemed you worth a second thought on my own account." With a consciously bad grace and stiff manner, as Rayburn looked so easily and calmly on, he went out with these words, and the heavy door closed like a furnace door upon his red and white heats of rage. "Curious, monomaniac," said Eugene. "The man seems to believe that everybody was acquainted with his mother." Mortimer Lightwood, being still at the window, to which he had in delicacy withdrawn, Eugene called to him, and he fell to slowly pacing the room. "My dear fellow," said Eugene, as he lighted another cigar, "I fear my unexpected visitors have been troublesome. If, as a set-off, excuse the legal phrase from a barrister at law, you would like to ask tippens to tea, I pledge myself to make love to her." "Eugene, Eugene, Eugene," replied Mortimer, still pacing the room, "I am sorry for this, and to think that I have been so blind. How blind, dear boy," inquired his unmoved friend. "What were your words at night at the riverside public house?" said Lightwood, stopping. "What was it that you asked me? Did I feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when I thought of that girl?" "Hmm, I seem to remember the expression," said Eugene, "how do you feel when you think of her just now?" His friend made no direct reply, but observed, after a few whiffs of his cigar, "I don't mistake the situation. There is no better girl in all this London than Vizzy Hexham. There is no better among my people at home, no better among your people." Granted, what follows? "There," said Eugene, looking after him jubiously, as he paced away to the other end of the room, "you put me again upon guessing the riddle that I have given up." "Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?" "My dear fellow, no. Do you design to marry her?" "My dear fellow, no. Do you design to pursue her?" "My dear fellow, I don't design anything. I have no design, whatever. I am incapable of designs. If I conceive a design, I should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation." "Oh, Eugene, Eugene." "My dear Mortimer, not that tone of melancholy reproach I entreat. What can I do more than tell you all I know and acknowledge my ignorance of all I don't know? How does that little old song go, which, under pretense of being cheerful, is by far the most lugubrious I ever heard in my life?" "Away with the melancholy, nor doleful changes ring, on life and human folly, but merrily, merrily sing, fala. Don't let us sing, fala, my dear Mortimer, which is comparatively unmeaning, but let us sing that we give up guessing the riddle altogether." "Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene? And is what these people say true?" "I concede both admissions to my honorable and learned friend." "Then what is to become of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?" "My dear Mortimer, one will think the schoolmaster had left behind a mechanicizing infection. You are ruffled by the want of another cigar. Take one of these, I entreat. Light it at mine, which is in perfect order. So now do me the justice to observe that I am doing all I can towards self-improvement, and that you have a light thrown on those household implements which, when you only saw them as in a glass darkly, you were hastily, I must say, hastily, inclined to depreciate. Sensible of my deficiencies, I have surrounded myself with moral influences, expressly meant to promote the formation of the domestic virtues, to those influences, and to the improving society of my friend from boyhood, commend me with your best wishes." "Ah, Eugene," said Lightwood affectionately, now standing near him, so that they both stood in one little cloud of smoke. "I won't let you answer my three questions. What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?" "And my dear Mortimer," returned Eugene, lightly fanning away the smoke with his hand for the better exposition of his frankness of face and manner. "Believe me, I would answer them instantly, if I could. But to enable me to do so, I must first have found out the troublesome conundrum long abandoned." Here it is. Eugene Rayburn, tapping his forehead and breast, "Riddle me, riddle me ree. Perhaps you can't tell me what this may be. No, upon my life I can't. I give it up." End of Book II, Chapter VI. Chapter VII, in which a friendly move is originated. The arrangement between Mr. Boffin and his literary man, Mr. Silas Wag, so far altered, with the altered habits of Mr. Boffin's life, as that the Roman Empire usually declined in the morning, and in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, rather than in the evening, as of your, and in Boffin's bower. There were occasions, however, when Mr. Boffin, seeking a brief refuge from the blandishments of fashion, would present himself at the bower after dark, to anticipate the next sullying forth of Wag, and would, there, on the old settle, pursue the downward fortunes of those innovative and corrupted masters of the world, who were by this time on their last legs. If Wag had been worse paid for his office, or better qualified to discharge it, he would have considered these visits complementary and agreeable. But, holding the position of a handsomely remunerated humbug, he resented them. This was quite according to Rule, for the incompetent servant, by whom so ever employed, is always against his employer. Even those born governors, noble and right honourable creatures, who have been the most imbecile in high places, have uniformly shown themselves the most opposed, sometimes in belying distrust, sometimes in vapid insolence, to their employer. What is in such wise chew of the public master and servant is equally true of the private master and servant, all the world over. When Mr. Silas Wag did at last obtain free access to our house, as he had been wont to call the mansion, outside which he had sat shelterless so long, and when he did at last find it in all particulars, as different from his mental plans of it, as according to the nature of things it well could be, that far-seeing and far-reaching character, by way of asserting himself, and making out a case for compensation, affected to fall into a melancholy strain of musing over the mournful past, as if the house and he had had a fall in life together. "And this, sir," Silas would say to his patron, sadly nodding his head and musing, "was once or else, if sir, is the building from which I have so often seen those great creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, whose very names were of his own inventing, pass and re-pass, and as it come to this indeed, ah, dear me, dear me." So tender were his lamentations, had the kindly Mr. Boffin was quite sorry for him, and almost felt mistrustful that in buying the house he had done him an irreparable injury. Two or three diplomatic interviews, the result of great subtlety on Mr. Weg's part, but assuming the mask of careless yielding to a fortuitous combination of circumstances, impelling him towards Clark and Well, had enabled him to complete his bargain with Mr. Venus. "Bring me round to the bower," said Silas, when the bargain was closed, "next Saturday evening, and if a sociable glass of old Jemitee warm should meet your views, I am not the man to be graduate." "You are aware of my being poor Campanisa," replied Mr. Venus, "but be it so." "It being so. Here is Saturday evening come, and here is Mr. Venus come, and ringing at the bower gate." 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. Mr. Wake opens the gate, describes a sort of brown paper truncheon under Mr. Venus's arm and remarks in a dry tone. "Oh, I thought perhaps you might have come in a cab." "No, Mr. Wake," replies Venus. "I am not above a parcel." "About a parcel now," says Wake with some dissatisfaction, but does not openly growl. "A certain sort of parcel might be above you." "Here is your purchase, Mr. Wake," says Venus, politely handing it over. "And I am glad to restore it to the source from whence it flowed." "Thank you," says Wake. "Now, this affair is concluded. I may mention to you in a friendly way that I've my doubts whether, if I had consulted a lawyer, you could have kept this article back from me. I only throw it out as a legal point." "Do you think so, Mr. Wake?" "I bought you an open contract." "You can't buy human flesh and blood in these can't we, sir? Not alive, you can't?" says Wake, shaking his head. "Then query bone." "As a legal point," asks Venus, "as a legal point." "I am not competent to speak upon that, Mr. Wake," says Venus, redening and growing something louder. "But upon a point of fact, I think myself competent to speak, and as a point of fact, I would have seen you, will you allow me to say further?" "I wouldn't say more than further if I was you," Mr. Wake suggests, specifically. "Before I'd have given that packet into your hand without being paid my price for it, I don't pretend to know how the point of law may stand, but I'm thoroughly confident upon the point of fact." As Mr. Venus' irritable, no doubt owing to his disappointment and love, and as it is not the cue of Mr. Wake to have him out of temper, the latter gentleman soothingly remarks, "I only put this in a little case. I only put it heart-pathetically." "Then, I'd rather, Mr. Wake, you put it another time, penta-thetically," as Mr. Venus' retort, "for I tell you candidly I don't like your little cases." A ride by this time in Mr. Wake's sitting-room, made bright on the chilly evening by gaslight and fire, Mr. Venus softens and compliments him on his abode, profiting by the occasion to remind Wake that he, Venus, told him he had got into a good thing. "Tolerable," Wake rejoins, "backbearing mind, Mr. Venus, at there's no gold without its alloy. Max for yourself and take a seat in a chimbley corner. Will you perform upon a park, sir?" "I am but an indifferent performer, sir," returns the other, "but I'll accompany you with a whiff for two at intervals." So, Mr. Venus mixes and Weg mixes, and Mr. Venus lights and puffs, and Mr. Weg lights and puffs. "And there's alloy even in this metal of yours, Mr. Weg, you was remarking?" "Mystery," returns Weg. "I don't like it, Mr. Venus. I don't like to have the life knocked out of former inhabitants of this house in the gloomy dark, and not know who did it. Might you have any suspicions, Mr. Weg?" "No," returns that gentleman. "I know, profits by it, but I've no suspicions." Having said which, Mr. Weg smokes and looks at the fire with the most determined expression of charity, as if he had caught that cardinal virtue by the skirts, as she felt at her painful duty to depart from him, and held her by main force. "Similarly," resumes Weg, "I have observations, as I can offer upon certain points and parties, but I make no objections, Mr. Venus. Here is an immense fortune, dropped from the clouds, upon a person that shall be nameless. Here is a weekly allowance, with a certain weight of coals, dropped from the clouds, upon me. Which of us is a bit a man? Not the person that shall be dangerous. That's an observation of mine, but I don't make it an objection. I take my allowance, and my certain weight of coals. He takes his fortune. That's the way it works. It would be a good thing for me if I could see things in the calm light you do, Mr. Weg. Again, look here! Pursue Silas, for an oratorical flourish of his pipe in his wooden leg, for that are having an undignified tendency to tilt him back in his chair. Here's another observation, Mr. Venus, unaccompanied with an objection. "Im that shall be nameless, is liable to be talked over. He gets talked over. Im that shall be nameless, have immediately dried and, naturally, looking to be promoted higher, and you may perhaps say merit him to be promoted higher." Mr. Venus murmurs that he does say so. "Im that shall be nameless, under such certain stances, passes me by, and puts a talk in over stranger above my head. Which of us two is the better man? Which of us two can repeat most poetry? Which of us two, as, in the servers of 'Im that shall be nameless, tackled the Romans, both civil and military, till he has got as asky as if he'd been weaned and ever since brought up on sawdust? Not the talk in over stranger. Yet the house is as free to 'im as if it was his. And he has his room, and has put upon a foot in, and draws about a thousand a year. I am banished to the bower, to be found in it like a piece of furniture whenever wanted. Merit, therefore, don't win. That's the way it works. Observe it, because it can't help observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful sight and notice. But I don't have yet. Every year before Mr. Venus? "Not inside a gate, Mr. Weg. You've been as far as a gate, then, Mr. Venus?" "Yes, Mr. Weg, and peeped in from curiosity. Did you see anything?" "Nothing, but the dustyard. Mr. Weg rolls his eyes all round the room in that ever unsatisfied crest of his, and then rolls his eyes all round Mr. Venus, as if suspicious of his having something about him to be found out." "And yet, sir," he pursues, "being acquainted with old Mr. Arman, wondered of thought it might have been polite in ye, too, to give him a call. And you're naturally of a polite disposition, you are. This last clause as a softening compliment to Mr. Venus." "It is, too, sir," replies Venus, winking his weak eyes and running his fingers through his dusty shock of hair, "that I was so before a certain observation sowed me, you understand to what I elude, Mr. Weg, to a certain written statement respecting not wishing to be regarded in a certain light, since that always fled save gall." "Not all," says Mr. Weg, in a tone of sentimental condonance. "Yes, sir," returns Venus, "all, the world my deemy darsh, but I quite assume pitch into my best friend is not. Indeed, I'd sooner." In voluntarily making a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself, as Mr. Venus springs up in the emphasis of this unsociable declaration, Mr. Weg tilts over on his back, chair and all, and is rescued by that harmless mis-and-thrope in a disjointed state and ruefully rubbing his head. "Why, he lost your balance, Mr. Weg," says Venus, handing him his pipe. "And about time to do it," grumbles Silas, "when a man's visitors, without a word or notice, conduct themselves with a sudden wish-isness of jacks and boxes, don't come flying up your chair like that, Mr. Venus." "Ah, sure pardon, Mr. Weg, I'm so soured." "Yes, but hang it," says Weg, argumentatively, "a well-governed mind can be soured sitting, and as to being regarded in lights, these bumpy lights, as well as bony, in which," again rubbing his head, "I object to regard myself. I'll bear it in memory, sir, if you'll be so good." Mr. Weg slowly subdues his ironical tone and his lingering irritation and resumes his pipe. "We were talking about Mr. Arman, being a friend of yours. Not a friend, Mr. Weg, only know to speak to, and to have a little deal with now and then, a very inquisitive character, Mr. Weg, regarding what was found in the dust, as inquisitive a secret." "Ah, you found him secret?" returns Weg with a greedy relish. He had always the look of it and the manner of it. "Ah, with another role of his eyes, as to what was found in the dust now. Did you ever hear him mention how he found it, my dear friend? Living on the mysterious premises. One lot I know. For instance, where he found things. Or, for instance, how he set about it. Whether he began at the top of the mound, or whether he began at the bottom?" "Whether he prodded." Mr. Weg's pantomime is skillful and expressive here. "Or whether he scooped." "Should you say scooped? My dear Mr. Venus, or should you, as a man, say prodded?" "Ah, should say no, the Mr. Weg. As a fellow man, Mr. Venus, mix again." 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. Why neither? Because I suppose, sir, that what was found was found in the sorting and sifting, all the mounds are sorted and sifted, you shall see him and pass your opinion, mix again. On each occasion of his saying, "Mix again," Mr. Weg, with a hop on his wooden leg, hitches his chair a little nearer, more as if he were proposing that himself and Mr. Venus should mix again than that they should replenish their glasses. "Live in," as I said before, "on the mysterious premises," says Weg, when the other has acted on his hospitable and treaty, "more likes to know. Would you be inclined to say now, as a brother, that you ever hid things in the dust as well as found him?" Mr. Weg on the whole eye should say he might. Mr. Weg claps on his spectacles and admiringly surveys Mr. Venus from head to foot. "As am all equally with myself, whose hand I take in mine for the first time this day, having unaccountably overlooked that act so full of boundless confidence bind in a fellow creature to a fellow creature," says Weg, holding Mr. Venus's palm out, flat and ready for smiting, and now smiting it. "As such, and now other, for our scorn or lonelier times betwixt myself and the man walking with his face erect, that alone I call me twin, regarded and regarding, in this trustful bond, what do you think he might have hid?" "It is but a supposition, Mr. Weg. As a being with his hand upon his heart," cries Weg, and the apostrophe is not the less impressive for the being's hand being actually upon his rum and water. "Put your supposition in a language and bring it out, Mr. Venus." "He was the species of old gentlemen, sir," slowly returns that practical anatomist after drinking, that I should judge lightly to take such opportunities as this place offered of stowing away money, valuables, maybe papers. "As one, that was ever an ornament to human life," says Mr. Weg, again holding out Mr. Venus's palm, as if he were going to tell his fortune by caramancy, and holding his own up ready for smiting it when the time should come. "As one, that the poet might have had his eye on, in writing the national naval words, helm or weather, now layer close, yard-arm and yard-arm she lies," again cried I, Mr. Venus, give her tether-dose, man shrouds and grapples, or she flies. "They used to say," regarded in the light of true British oak, "or such you are," explained Mr. Venus, the expression "papers." "Seeing that the old gentleman was generally cutting off some near-relation or blocking out some natural affliction," Mr. Venus rejoins, "he most likely made a good many wills and codicils." The palm of Silas Weg descends with a sounding smack upon the palm of Venus, and Weg lavishly exclaims, "Twin, in opinion equally with feeling, mix a little more." Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of Mr. Venus, Mr. Weg rapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his glass, touches its rim with the rim of his own, puts his own to his lips, puts it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor's knees, thus addresses him. "Mr. Venus, it ain't the eye object to being passed over for a stranger, though I regard as stranger as more than doubtful customer. It ain't for the sake of making money, though money is ever welcome. It ain't for myself, though I'm not so haughty as to be above doing myself a good turn. It's for the cause of the right." Mr. Venus passively winking his weak eyes, both at once demands, "What is Mr. Weg?" "The friendly moves, sir, that are now proposed." "You see, the moves, sir?" "Till you have pointed out, Mr. Weg, I can't say whether I do or not." "If there is anything to be found on these premises, let us find it together. Let us make the friendly move of the green to look for it together. Let us make the friendly move of the green to share the profits of it equally betwixt us in the cause of right, thus silence assuming a noble heir." "Then," says Mr. Venus, looking up, after meditating with his hair held in his hands, as if he could only fix his attention by fixing his head. "If anything was to be unburied from under the dust, it would be kept a secret by you and me. Would that be it, Mr. Weg?" "That would depend upon what it was, Mr. Venus. Say it was money, or plate, or jewelry. It would be as much a house as anybody else's." Mr. Venus rubs an eyebrow interrogatively. "In the cause of the right, it would, because it would be unknowingly sold with the mounds, else, and the buyer would get what he was never meant to have and never bought. And what would that be, Mr. Venus, but the cause of the wrong?" "Say it was papers," Mr. Venus repands. "According to what they contained, we should offer to dispose of him to the parties most interested," replies Weg promptly. "In the cause of right, Mr. Weg. All why, so, Mr. Venus? If the parties should use them in the cause of the wrong, that would be their act, indeed. Mr. Venus, I have an opinion of you, sir, to which is not easy to give mouth. Since I called upon you that evening, when you were, as I say, floating your powerful mind in tea, I have felt that you were required to be roused with an object. In this friendly move, sir, you will have a glorious object to rouse you." Mr. Weg then goes on to enlarge upon what, throughout, has been uppermost in his crafty mind. The qualifications of Mr. Venus for such a search. He expatiates on Mr. Venus's patient habits and delicate manipulation, on his skill in piecing little things together, on his knowledge of various tissues and textures, on the likelihood of small indications leading him on to the discovery of great concealments. "While, as to myself," says Weg, "are not good at it, whether I gave myself up to putting, or whether I gave myself up to scooping. I couldn't do it with that delicate touch, so as not to show that I was disturbing the man's. Quite different with you, going to work, as you would, in the light of a fellow man, wholly pledged in a friendly move to his brother-man." Mr. Weg next modestly remarks on the want of adaptation in a wooden leg to ladders, and such like airy perches, and also hints at an inherent tendency in that timber fiction, when called into action for the purposes of a promenade on an ashy slope, to stick itself into the yielding foothold and peg its owner to one spot. Then, leaving this part of the subject, he remarks on the special phenomenon, that before his installation in the bower, it was for Mr. Venus that he first heard of the legend of hidden wealth in the mounds, which he observes of the vaguely pious air, or surely never meant for nothing. Lastly, he returns to the cause of the right, gloomily foreshadowing the possibility of something being unearthed to culminate Mr. Buffon, of whom he once more candidly admits it cannot be denied that he profits by a murder, and anticipating his denunciation by the friendly movers to avenging justice. And this, Mr. Weg expressly points out, not at all for the sake of the reward, though it would be a one to principle not to take it. To all this Mr. Venus, with his shock of dusty hair cocked after the manner of a terrier's ears, attends profoundly. When Mr. Weg having finished, opens his arms wide, as if to show Mr. Venus how bare his breast is, and then folds them pending a reply, Mr. Venus winks at him with both eyes, some little time before speaking. "I see you have tried it by yourself, Mr. Weg," he says, when he does speak, "you have found out the difficulties by experience." "No, it can hardly be said that I have tried it," replies Weg, a little dashed by the hint, "I have just skimmed it, skimmed it." And found nothing besides the difficulties, Weg shakes his head. I scarcely know what the same to this Mr. Weg observes Venus after ruminating for a while. "Say yes," Weg naturally urges. "If all that soured, my answer would be no, but being soured, Mr. Weg, and driven to reckless madness and desperation, I suppose it's yes." Weg joyfully reproduces the two glasses, repeats the ceremony of clinking their rims and inwardly drinks with great heartiness to the health and success and life of the young lady who has reduced Mr. Venus to his present convenient state of mind. The articles of the friendly move are then several recited and agreed upon. They are but secrecy, fidelity, and perseverance. The bower to be always free of access to Mr. Venus were his researchers, and every precaution to be taken against their attracting observation in the neighborhood. There's a footstep, exclaimed Venus. Way. 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, offers subject to change, terms apply. Cries Weg starting, outside. St. They are in the act of ratifying the treaty of friendly move by shaking hands upon it. They softly break off, light their pipes which have gone out, and lean back in their chairs. No doubt a footstep. It approaches the window and a hand taps at the glass. "Cameen!" calls Weg, meaning come round by the door. But the heavy old-fashioned sash is slowly raised, and a head slowly looks in, out of the dark background of night. "Pray is Mr. Silas Weg here." "Oh, I see him." The friendly movers might not have been quite at their ease, even though the visitor had entered in the usual manner. But leaning on the breast-high window and staring in, out of the darkness, they find the visitor extremely embarrassing. Especially Mr. Venus, who removes his pipe, draws back his head, and stares at the starer as if it were his own Hindu baby come to fetch him home. "Good evening, Mr. Weg. The yard-gate lock should be looked to if you please. It don't catch." "Easy, Mr. Rokesmith?" falters Weg. "It is, Mr. Rokesmith. Don't let me disturb you. I'm not coming in. I have only a message for you, which I undertook to deliver on my way home to my lodgings. I was in two minds about coming beyond the gate without ringing, but knowing which you might have a dog about. I wish I had." mutters Weg, with his back turned as he rose from his chair. "Sst. Hush. They talkin' over stranger, Mr. Venus." "Is that anyone I know?" inquires the staring secretary. "Now, Mr. Rokesmith, friend of mine, part in the evening with me." "Oh, I beg his pardon. Mr. Buffon wishes you to know that he does not expect you to stay at home in the evening on the chance of his coming. It has occurred to him that he may, without intending it, have been a tie upon you. In future, if he should come without notice, he will take his chance of finding you, and it will be all the same to him if he does not. I undertook to tell you on my way. That's all." With that, and, good night, the secretary lowers the window and disappears. They listen, and hear his footsteps go back to the gate, and hear the gate close after him. "And, for that endlewidule, Mr. Venus," remarks Weg when he is fully gone, "I being passed over, let me ask you what you think of him." Apparently, Mr. Venus does not know what to think of him, for he makes sundry efforts to reply, without delivering himself of any other articulate utterance than that he has a singular look. "The double look, you mean, sir," rejoins Weg, playing bitterly upon the word. "That's his look. Any amount of singular look for me, but not a double look. That's an underhanded mind, sir." "Do you say there's something against him?" Venus asks. "Something against him," repeats Weg. "Something? What would the relief be to my feelings, as a fellow man, if I wasn't the slave of truth, and didn't feel myself compelled to answer everything?" See into what wonderful mordland refuges, featherless ostriches plunge their heads. It is such unspeakable moral compensation to Weg, to be overcome by the consideration that Mr. Rooksmith has an underhanded mind. "On the starlight night, Mr. Venus," he remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover out across the yard, and both are something the worse for mixing again and again. "On this starlight night, to think that, talking over strangers and underhanded minds, can go walking home under the sky as if they was all square." "The spectacle of those orbs," says Mr. Venus, gazing upward with his hat tumbling off, "brings every on me her crushing words, though she did not wish to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in that. "I know, I know, you needn't repeat 'em," says Weg, pressing his hand. "But think, how thou star steady me, in the cause of the right, against some that shall be nameless. It isn't that our bare malice. But see how they glisten with old remembrances. Old remembrances of what, sir?" Mr. Venus begins drearily replying, of her words, in her own handwriting, that she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet, when Silas cuts him short with dignity. "No, sir, remembrances of our house, of Master George, of all Jane, of Uncle Parker, all laid waste, all offered up sacrifices to the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour." The minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, or in less cutting language, Nicodemus' buffenest glire, the Golden Dustman, had become as much at home in his eminently aristocratic family mansion as he was likely ever to be. He could not but feel that, like an eminently aristocratic family cheese, it was much too large for his wants, and bred an infinite amount of parasites. But he was content to regard this drawback on his property as a sort of perpetual legacy duty. He felt the more resigned to it, for as much as Mrs. Buffen enjoyed herself completely, and Miss Beller was delighted. That young lady was, no doubt, an acquisition to the Buffens. She was far too pretty to be unattractive anywhere, and far too quick a perception to be below the tone of her new career. Whether it improved her heart might be a matter of taste that was open to question. But as touching another matter of taste, its improvement of her appearance and manner there could be no question whatever. And thus it soon came about, at Miss Beller began to set Mrs. Buffen right. And even further, at Miss Beller began to feel ill at ease, and as it were responsible, when she saw Mrs. Buffen going wrong. Not that so sweet a disposition, and so sound a nature could ever go very wrong, even among the great visiting authorities, who agreed that the Buffens were charmingly vulgar, which for certain was not their own case in saying so. But that when she made a slip on the social ice, on which all the children of Potsnapery, with genteel souls to be saved, are required to skate in circles, or to slide in long rows, she inevitably chipped Miss Beller up, so that young lady felt, and caused her to experience great confusion under the glances of the more skillful performers engaged in those ice exercises. At Miss Beller's time of life it was not to be expected that she should examine herself very closely on the congruity or stability of her position in Mr. Buffen's house. And as she had never been sparing of complaints of her old home, when she had no other to compare it with, so there was no novelty of ingratitude or disdain in her very much preferring her new one. "An invaluable man is Rooksmith," said Mr. Buffen, after some two or three months. "But I can't quite make him out." Neither could Beller, so she found a subject rather interesting. "He takes more care of my affairs, warning noon and night," said Mr. Buffen, than 50 other men put together. I either could award, and yet he has his ways of his own that are like tying a scaffolding pole right across the road and bringing me up short when I am almost a walking arm in arm with him. "May I ask how so, sir?" inquired Beller. "Well, my dear," said Mr. Buffen, "you won't meet any company here, but you. When we have visitors, I should wish him to have his regular place at the table like ourselves. But no, he won't take it." "If he considers himself a buffet," said Miss Beller, with an airy toss of her head, "I should leave him alone." "It ain't that, my dear," replied Mr. Buffen, thinking it over. "He don't consider himself a buffet." "Perhaps he considers himself beneath it," suggested Beller. "If so, he ought to know best." "Now, my dear, nor it ain't that neither." "No," repeated Mr. Buffen, with a shake of his head, after again thinking it over. Rooksmiths, a modest man, but he don't consider himself beneath it. "Then what does he consider, sir?" "Our speller." "Dashdive, I know," said Mr. Buffen, "it seemed, at first, as if it was only lightwood that he objected to meet. And now it seems to be everybody—except you." "Oh, ho!" thought Miss Beller. "Indeed. That's it, is it?" For Mr. Mortimer Lightward had dined there two or three times, and she had met him elsewhere, and he had shown her some attention. Rather cool than a secretary, and Parr's lodger to make me the subject of his jealousy. That Parr's daughter should be so contemptuous that Parr's lodger was odd. But there were odder anomalies than that in the mind of the spoilt girl, spoilt first by poverty, and then by wealth, be it this history's part, however, to lead them to unravel themselves. "A little too much, I think," Miss Beller reflected scornfully, "to have Parr's lodger laying claim to me and keeping eligible people off." "A little too much, indeed, to have the opportunities open to me by Mr. Mrs. Buffen, appropriated by a mere secretary and Parr's lodger." Yet it was not so very long ago that Beller had been fluttered by the discovery at the same secretary and lodger seemed to like her. Ah, but the amminently aristocratic mansion and Mrs. Buffen's dressmaker had not come into play then. 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. In spite of his seemingly retiring manners, a very intrusive person, this secretary and lodger, in Miss Beller's opinion, always alight in his office room when we came home from the play of the opera, and he awes that the carriage door to hand us out. Always a provoking radiance too on Mrs. Boffin's face, and an abominably cheerful reception of him as if it were possible seriously to approve what the man had in his mind. "You never charge me," Miss Wilfer, said the secretary, encountering her by chance alone in the great drawing room, with the commissions for home. "I shall always be happy to execute any commands you may have in that direction." "Pray, what do you mean, Mr. Rook Smith?" inquired Miss Beller, with languidly drooping eyelids. "By home, I mean your father's house at Hallaway." She colored under the retort, so skilfully thrust, that the words seemed to be merely a plain answer given in plain good faith, and said rather more emphatically and sharply, "What commissions and commands are you speaking of?" "Only little words of remembrance, as I assume you sent somehow or other," replied the secretary, with this wall my air. "It would be a pleasure to me, if you would make me the bearer of them. As you know, I come and go between the two houses every day." "Who needn't remind me of that, sir?" She was too quick in this petalant Sally against Parr's lodger, and she felt that she had been so when she met his quiet look. "They don't send many." "What was your expression?" "Words of remembrance to me," said Beller, making hist to take refuge in ill usage. "They frequently ask me about you, and I give them such slight intelligence as I can." "I hope it's truly given," exclaimed Beller. "I hope you cannot doubt it." "But it would be very much against you, if you could." "No. I do not doubt it. I deserve the reproach, which is very just indeed. I beg your pardon, Mr. Oaksmith." "I should beg you not to do so, but that it shows you to such admirable advantage," he replied with earnestness. "Forgive me, I could not help saying that." "To return to what I have digress from, let me add that perhaps they think I report them to you, deliver little messages and the like; but I forbear to trouble you, as you never ask me." "I am going, sir," said Beller, looking at him, as if he had reproved her, "to see them tomorrow." "Is that?" he asked, hesitating, said to me, or to them. "To which you please?" "To both." "Shall I make it a message?" "You can, if you like, Mr. Oaksmith. Message or no message? I am going to see them tomorrow." "Then I will tell them so." He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of prolonging the conversation if she wished. As she remained silent, he left her. Two incidents of the little interview were felt by Miss Beller herself, when alone again, to be very curious. The first was, that he unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a penitent feeling in her heart. The second was that she had not an intentional thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled design. "What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?" was her mental inquiry. "He has no right to any power over me, and how do I come to mind him when I don't care for him?" Mrs. Buffon, insisting that Beller should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window, at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours. Then they repaired to the usual family room to receive Miss Beller with a becoming show of indifference. The family room looked very small and very mean, and the downward staircase by which it was attained looked very narrow and very crooked. The little house and all its arrangements were a poor contrast to the eminently aristocratic dwelling. "I can hardly believe," thought Beller, "that I ever did endure life in this place. Gloomy Majesty, on the part of Mrs. Wilfer, a native purtness on the part of Lavin, did not mend the matter. Beller really stood in natural need of a little help, and she got none. "This," said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, a sympathetic and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, "is quite an honour. You'll probably find your sister, Levy, groan, Beller." "Ma," Miss Lavin, you're interposed, "there can be no objection to your being aggravating because Beller richly deserves it, but I really must request that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as my having grown when I'm past the growing age." "I grew myself," Mrs. Wilfer sternly proclaimed, "after I was married." "Very well, Ma," returned Levy, "then I think you'd much better have left it alone." The lofty glare, with which the majestic woman received this answer, might have embarrassed a less purt opponent, but it had no effect upon the vineyard. Who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of any amount of glaring, as she might deem desirable under the circumstances, accosted her sister, undersmade. "I suppose you won't consider yourself quite distressed, Beller, if I give you a kiss?" "Well, and how do you do, Beller, and how are your boffins?" "Peace," exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, "hold, I will not suffer this tone of levity." "My goodness me, how are your spuffins, then?" said Levy, "Since ma so very much objects to your boffins." "Impertinent girl, minks," said Mrs. Wilfer, with dread severity. "I don't care whether I'm a minks or a stinks," returned Lavinia, coolly tossing her head. "It's exactly the same thing to me, and I'd every bit as soon be one as the other, but I know this. I'll not grow after I'm married." "You will not." "You will not," repeated Mrs. Wilfer, solemnly. "No, ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me." Mrs. Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic. "But it was to be expected," thus she spake. "A child of mine deserts me for the proud and prosperous, and another child of mine despises me. It is quite fitting." "Ma," Bella struck in, "Mr. Mrs. Buffon are prosperous, no doubt; but you've no right to say they're proud. You must know very well that they're not." "In short, ma," said Levy, bouncing over to the enemy without a word of notice, "you must know very well, or if you don't, more shame for you. That Mr. and Mrs. Buffon are just absolute perfection." "Truly," returned Mrs. Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter, "it would seem that we are required to think so, and this, Levenia, is my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs. Buffon, of whose physiognomy I can never speak with the composure I would desire to preserve, and your mother, or not, on terms of intimacy. It is not for a moment to be supposed, a chie and her husband dare, to presume, to speak of this family as the Wilfer's. I cannot therefore condescend to speak of them as the Buffon's. No, for such a tone, call it familiarity, levity, equality, or what you will, would imply those social interchanges which do not exist. Do I render myself intelligible?" Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an imposing and forensic manner, Levenia reminded her sister, "After all, you know, Bella, you haven't told us how your 'what's' his names are." "I don't want to speak of them here," replied Bella, suppressing indignation and tapping her foot on the floor. "They are much too kind and too good to be drawn into these discussions." "Why, put it so?" To mad Mrs. Wilfer, with biting sarcasm, "Why adopt a circuitous form of speech? It is polite, and it is obliging, but why do it? Why not openly say that they are much too kind and too good for us? We understand the illusion. Why disguise the phrase?" "Ma!" said Bella, with one beat of her foot. "You're enough to drive a saint mad, and so is Levey." "An fortune at Levey," cried Mrs. Wilfer, and a tone of commiseration. "She always comes for it, my poor child." But Levey, with the suddenness of her former desertion, now bounced over to the other enemy, very sharply remarking, "Don't patronize me, Ma, because I can take care of myself." "I only wonder," presumed Mrs. Wilfer, directing her observations to her elder daughter, a safer on the whole, and our utterly unmanageable younger, "that you found time and inclination to tear yourself from Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only wonder that our claims, contending against the superior claims of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, had any weight. I feel I ought to be thankful for gaining so much in competition with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin." The good lady bitterly emphasized the first letter of the word Boffin, as if it represented her chief objection to the owners of that name, and as if she could have borne Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better. "Ma!" said Bella angrily. "You forced me to say, that I'm truly sorry I did come home, and that I never will come home again, except when poor dear Pa is here. For Pa is too magnanimous to feel envy and spite towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate enough and gentle enough to remember the sort of little claim they thought I had upon them, and the unusually trying position in which, through no act of my own, I'd been placed, and I always did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest of you put together, and I always do, and I always shall." Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and her elegant dress, burst into tears. "I think, are W." 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. Pride Mrs. Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and apostatizing the air. That if you were present, it would be a trial to your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of your family depreciated in your name, but fate has spared you this R.W. whatever it may have thought proper to inflict upon her. Here, Mrs. Wilfer burst into tears. "I hate the boffins," protested Miss Lavigna. "I don't care who objects to their being called the boffins. I will call them the boffins. The boffins are boffins, the boffins. And I say they are mischief-making boffins, and I say the boffins have set bellar against me, and I tell the boffins to their faces." Which was not strictly the fact, but the young lady was excited. "That they are detestable boffins! Disrefendable boffins! Odeous boffins! Bistly boffins! There!" Here, Mrs. Lavigna burst into tears. The front garden gate clanked, and the secretary was seen, coming at a brisk pace up the steps. "Leave me to open the door to him," said Mrs. Wilfer, rising with stately resignation, as she shook her head and dried her eyes. "We have, at present, no stipendary girl to do so. We have nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of emotion on our cheeks, let him construe them as he may." With those words, she stalked out. In a few moments, she stalked in again, proclaiming in her heraldic way, "Mr. Rokesmith is the bearer of a packet for Miss Bellar Wilfer." Mr. Rokesmith followed close upon his name, and, of course, saw what was a miss. But he discreetly affected to see nothing, and addressed Miss Bellar. "Mr. Barton intended to replace this in the carriage for you this morning. He wished you to have it, as if the keepsick he had prepared. It is only a purse, Miss Wilfer, but as he was disappointed in his fancy, I volunteered to come after you with it." Bellar took it in her hand, and thanked him. "We have been quarreling here a little, Mr. Rokesmith, but not more than we used. You know our agreeable ways among ourselves. You find me just going. Goodbye, Emma. Goodbye, Lavi." And with a kiss for each, Miss Bellar turned to the door. The secretary would have attended her, but Mrs. Wilfer advancing and saying with dignity, a pardon me, permit me to assert my natural right, to escort my child to the equippage which is in waiting for her. He begged pardon and gave place. It was a very magnificent spectacle indeed, to see Mrs. Wilfer throw open the house door, and loudly demand with extended gloves. The mail, domestic of Mrs. Boffin! To whom, presenting himself, she delivered the brief but majestic charge, Miss Wilfer coming out, and so delivered her over, like a female lieutenant of the tower, relinquishing a state prisoner. The effect of this ceremonial was, for some quarter of an hour afterwards, perfectly paralyzing on the neighbours, and was much enhanced by the worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of splendidly serene trance on the top step. When Bellar was seated in the carriage, she opened the little packet in her hand. It contained a pretty purse, and the purse contained a banknote for fifty pounds. "This will be a joyful surprise, for poor dear Pa," said Bellar, "and I'll take it myself into the city." As she was uninformed, respecting the exact locality of the place of business of chicksie, veneering and stobbles, but knew it to be near Minsing Lane, she directed herself to be driven to the corner of that darksome spot. Then she dispatched the male domestic of Mrs. Boffin, in search of the counting house of chicksie, veneering and stobbles, with a message importing that if R. Wilfer could come out, there was a lady waiting who would be glad to speak with him. The delivery of these mysterious words from the mouth of a footman caused so great an excitement in the counting house that a youthful scout was instantly appointed to follow Rumpty, observe the lady, and come in with his report. Nor was the agitation by any means diminished when the scout rushed back with the intelligence that the lady was a slap-up girl and a bang-up chariot. Rumpty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived at the carriage door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly lugged into the vehicle by his gravette and embraced almost unto choking before he recognized his daughter. "My dear child," he then panted incoherently, "could gracious me what a lovely woman you are. I thought you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister." "I have just been to see them, Pardier." "Oh, and how? How did you find your mother?" asked R.W., dubiously. "Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Levy." "The...um...oh, sometimes a little reliable to it," observed the patient cherub, "but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear." "No, I was disagreeable to Pa, but were all of us disagreeable together, but I want you to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa." "Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a...if one might mention such an article in this superb chariot of a Saviloy," replied R. Wilfer, modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed the canary-colored fittings. "Oh, that's nothing, Pa." "Truly it ain't as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my dear," he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. "Still, when circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles between yourself and small Germans, you can't do better than bring a contented mind to hereon." Again, dropping his voice in deference to the chariot, "Serviloy's." "You poor good Pa, Pa, do I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the day, and come and pass it with me." "Well, my dear, I'll cut back and ask for leave." "But before you cut back," said Bella, who had already taken him by the chin, pulled his hat off and began to stick up his hair in her old way, "do say that you're sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never really slighted you, Pa." "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. "My dear! I say it with all my heart, and might I likewise observe," her father delicately hinted, the glance out at window, "that perhaps it might be calculated to attract attention, having once hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turnout in Fenchurch Street?" Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out of her eyes. "I hate that secretary for thinking it of me," she said to herself, "and yet it seems half true." Back came her father, more like a boy than ever in his release from school. "All right, my dear. Leave given it once. Really, very handsomely done." "Now where can we find some quiet place-par, in which I can wait for you while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?" It demanded cogitation. "You see, my dear," he explained, "you really have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to be a very quiet place." At length he suggested, near the garden, up by the Trinity house on Tower Hill. So they were driven there, and Bella dismissed the chariot, sending a penciled note by it to Mrs. Waffen, that she was with her father. "Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be obedient." "I promise and vow, my dear." "You ask no questions. You take this purse. You go to the nearest place where they keep everything of the very, very best ready maid. You buy and put on the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most beautiful hat, and there was beautiful pair of bright boots, patent leather-par mine, that ought to be got for money. And you come back to me." "But, my dear Bella, take care, Pa," pointed her forefinger at him merrily, "you have promised and vowed. It's perjury, you know." There was water in the foolish little fellow's eyes, but you kissed them dry, though her own were wet, and he bobbed away again. After half an hour he came back, so brilliantly transformed, that Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times before she could draw her arm through his and delightedly squeeze it. "Now, Pa," said Bella, hugging him close, "take this lovely woman out to dinner." "Where shall we go, my dear?" "Crennage," said Bella, valiantly, "and be sure to treat this lovely woman with everything of the best." "While they were going along to take boat." "Don't you wish, my dear," said R.W. timidly, "that your mother was here?" "No, I don't, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself today. I was always your little favorite at home, and you were always mine. We have run away together often before now, haven't we, Pa?" "Ah, to be sure we have. Many a Sunday when your mother was a little liable to it," repeating his former delicate expression after pausing to cough. "Yes, and I'm afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to have been, Pa. I made you carry me, over and over again, when you should have made me walk. And I often drove you in harness when you would much rather have sat down and read your newspapers. Didn't I?" "Sometimes and sometimes, but law, what a child you were, what a companion you were." "Compinion? That's just what I want to be today, Pa." "You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters have all in their turns been companions to me, to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent. Your mother has, throughout life, been a companion that any man might look up to and commit the sayings of to memory and form himself upon, if he liked the model?" suggested Bella. "Well, yes," he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied with the phrase. "Or, perhaps I might say, if it was in him? Supposing, for instance, that a man wanted to be always marching, he would find your mother an inestimable companion. But if he had any taste for walking, or should we should any time to break into a trot, he might sometimes find it a little difficult to keep step with your mother. "Or, take it this way, Bella," he added after a moment's reflection, "supposing that a man had to go through life, or he won't say with a companion, but will say to attune, very good. Supposing that tune allotted to him was the dead march in Saul. Well, it would be a very suitable tune for particular occasions, non-better, but it would be difficult to keep time with in the ordinary run of domestic transactions. For instance, if he took his supper after a hard day to the dead march in Saul, his food might be likely to sit heavy on him. Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve his mind by singing a comic song, or dancing a hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the dead march in Saul, he might find himself put out the execution of his lively intentions. "Pruh, par," thought Bella, as she hung upon his arm. "Now, what I will say for you, my dear," the chair of pursued mildly and without a notion of complaining, "is that you are so adaptable, so adaptable." Indeed, I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, par. I am afraid I have been very complaining and very capricious. I still have more never thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now, and saw you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself. "Not at all, my dear, don't speak of such a thing." A happy and a chatty man was par in his new clothes that day. Take it for all in all, it was perhaps the happiest day he had ever known in his life. Not even accepting that, on which his heroic partner had approached an up to alter to the tune of the dead march in Saul. The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was delightful. Everything was delightful. The park was delightful. The punch was delightful. The dishes of fish were delightful. The wine was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the festival. Drawing par out in the gayest manner, making a point of always mentioning herself as the lovely woman, stimulating par to order things by declaring that the lovely woman insisted on being treated with them, and in short, causing par to be quite unwraptured with the consideration that he was the par of such a charming daughter. And then, as they sat looking at the ships and steamboats, making their way to the sea with the tide that was running down, the lovely woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and par. Now par, and the character of owner of a lumbering square-sailed collier, was tacking away to Newcastle to fetch black diamonds to make his fortune with. Now par was going to China, in that handsome three-master ship, to bring home opium, was which he could forever cut out chicks even nearing and stubbles, and to bring home silks and shores without end for the decoration of his charming daughter. Now John Harmon's disastrous fate was all a dream, and he had come home and found the lovely woman just the article for him, and the lovely woman had found him just the article for her, and they were going away on a trip in their gallant bark to look after their vines, with streamers flying at all points, a band playing on deck, and par established in the great cabin. Now John Harmon was consigned to his grave again, and a merchant of immense wealth, name unknown, had courted and married the lovely woman, and he was so enormously rich that everything you saw upon the river sailing or steaming belonged to him, and he kept a perfect feat of yachts for pleasure, and that little impudent yacht which you saw over there, with the great white sail, was called "The Beller" in honor of his wife, and she held her state aboard when it pleased her like a modern Cleopatra. And none there would embark in that troop ship when she got to grave's end, a mighty general of large property, name also unknown, who wouldn't hear of going to victory without his wife, and whose wife was the lovely woman, and she was destined to become the idol of all the redcoats and blue jackets, a low and aloft, and then again you saw that ship being towed out by a steam tug? Well, where did you suppose she was going to? She was going among the coral rebs, and coconuts, and all that sort of thing, and she was chartered for a fortunate individual of the name of Pa, himself on board and much respected by all hands, and she was going, for his sole profit and advantage, to fetch a cargo of sweet-smelling woods, the most beautiful that ever were seen, and the most profitable that ever were heard of, and her cargo would be a great fortune, as indeed it ought to be, the lovely woman who had purchased her and fitted her expressly for this voyage, being married to an Indian prince, who was something or other, and who wore cashmere shores all over himself, and diamonds, and emeralds, blazing in his turban, and was beautifully coffee-coloured and excessively devoted, though a little too jealous. Thus Bella ran on merrily, in a manner perfectly enchanting to Pa, who was as willing to put his head into the sultan's tub of water, as the beggar-boys below the window were to put their heads in the mud. "I suppose, my dear," said Pa, after dinner, "we may come to the conclusion at home, that we have lost you for good?" Bella shook her head, didn't know, couldn't say, or she was able to report was, that she was most handsomely supplied with everything she could possibly want, and that whenever she hinted at leaving, Mr. Mrs. Boffin, they wouldn't hear of it. "And now, Pa," pursued Bella, "I'll make a confession to you. I am the most mercenary little wretch that ever lived in the world." "I should hardly have thought it of you, my dear," returned her father, first blancing at himself, and then at the dessert. "I understand what you mean, Pa, but it's not that. It's not that I care for money to keep us money, but I don't care so much for what it will buy." "Really, I think, most of us do," returned R.W., "but not to the dreadful extent that I do, Pa." cried Bella, screwing the exclamation out of herself for the twist of her dimpled chin. "I am so mercenary." With a wistful glance, R.W. said, in default of having anything better to say, about to, "When did you begin to feel it coming on, my dear?" "That's it, Pa. That's the terrible part of it. When I was at home and only knew what it was to be poor, I grumbled, but didn't so much mind. When I was at home expecting to be rich, I thought vaguely of all the great things I would do. But when I had been disappointed of my splendid fortune, and came to see it from day to day in other hands, and to have before my eyes what it could really do, then I became the mercenary little wretch I am." "It's your fancy, my dear." "I can assure you it's nothing of a sort, Pa," said Bella, nodding at him, with her very pretty eyebrows raised as high as they would go, and looking comically frightened. "It's a fact. I am always, averageously, scheming." "Laugh?" "But how?" "I tell you, Pa. I don't mind telling you, because we have always been favourites of each other, and because you are not like a Pa, but more like a sort of a younger brother, with a dear, venerable chappiness on him. And besides," added Bella, laughing as she pointed a rallying finger at his face, "because I have you in my power. This is a secret expedition. If ever you tell of me, I'll tell of you. I'll tell Marr that you dined at Greenwich." "Well, seriously, my dear," observed R.W., with some trepidation of manner, "it might be as well not to mention it." "Ah-ha-ha," laughed Bella, "I knew you wouldn't like it, sir. So you keep my confidence, and I'll keep yours. But betray the lovely woman, and you shall find her a serpent. Now, you may give me a kiss, Pa, and I should like to give your hair a turn, because it has been dreadfully neglected in my absence." R.W. submitted his head to the operator, and the operator went on talking. At the same time, putting separate locks of his hair through a curious process of being smartly rolled over her two revolving four fingers, which were then suddenly pulled out of it in opposite lateral directions. On each of these occasions, the patient winced and winked. "I've made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it. And so I have resolved that I must marry it." R.W. cast up his eyes towards her, as well as he could under the operating circumstances, and set in a tone of remonestands, "My dear Bella." "Have resolved, I say, Pa, that to get money, I must marry money. In consequence of which, I'm always looking out for money to captivate." "My dear Bella." "Yes, Pa. That is the state of the case. If ever there was a mercenary plotter whose thoughts and designs were always in her mean occupation, I am the amiable creature, but I don't care. I hate to test being poor, and I won't be poor if I can marry money." "Now, you've had to deliciously fluffy, Pa, and in the state to astonish the waiter and pay the bill." "But, my dear Bella, this is quite alarming at your age." "I told you so, Pa. But you wouldn't believe it." "Return, Bella, with a pleasant, childish gravity. Isn't it shocking?" "It would be quite so if you fully knew what you said, my dear, all meant it." "Well, Pa, I can only tell you that I mean nothing else. Talk to me of love." Said Bella contemptuously, though her face and figure certainly rendered the subject no incongruous one. "Talk to me of fiery dragons, but talk to me of poverty and wealth, and there, indeed, we touch upon realities." "My dear, this is becoming awful," her father was emphatically beginning when she stopped him. "Pah, tell me, did you marry money?" "You wouldn't, oh, I didn't, my dear." Bella hummed the dead march and saw, and said, after all, it signified very little. But seeing him look grave and downcast, she took him round the neck and kissed him back to cheerfulness again. "I didn't mean that last touch, Pa. It was only said in joke. Now, mind, you are not to tell of me, and I'll not tell of you. And more than that, I promised to have no secrets from you, Pa. And you make certain that whatever mercenary things go on, I shall always tell you all about them in strict confidence." Fain to be satisfied with this concession from the lovely woman, R.W. rang the bell, and paid the bill. "Now, all the rest of this, Pa," said Bella, rolling up the purse when they were alone again, hammering it small with a little fist on the table and cramming it into one of the pockets of his new waistcoat, "is for you to buy presents with for them at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper." Last of all, take note as Pa, "that is not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't make so free with it." After which, she tugged at his coat with both hands, and pulled him all askew, in buttoning that garment over the precious waistcoat pocket, and then tied her dimples into a bonnet-strings in a very knowing way, and took him back to London. Arrived at Mr. Boffin's door, she set him with his back against it, tenderly took him by the ears as convenient handles for her purpose, and kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks at the door with the back of his head. That done, she once more reminded him of their compact, and Galey parted from him. Not so Galey, however, but the tears filled her eyes as he went away down the dark street. Not so Galey, but that she several times said, "Ah, poor Le Pa! Ah, poor dear, struggling, shabby little Pa!" before she took heart to knock at the door. Not so Galey, but that the brilliant furniture seemed to stare her out of countenance, as if it insisted on being compared with the dingy furniture at home. Not so Galey, but she fell into very low spirits, sitting late in her own room, and very heartily wept, as she wished, now that the deceased old John Harmon had never made a will about her, now that the deceased young John Harmon had lived to marry her. "Contradictory things to wish," said Bella, "but my life and fortunes are so contradictory altogether that what can I expect myself to be?" End of Book Two, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, in which the orphan makes his will. The secretary, working in the dismal swamp be times next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a distant pause before uttering the name to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good scent and good taste to inherit some other name, it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer. "Mrs. Boffman will be very well pleased," said the secretary in a perfectly composed way, "show him in." Mr. Sloppy, being introduced, remained close to the door, revealing in various parts of his form many surprising confounding and incomprehensible buttons. "I'm glad to see you," said John Rooks with a cheerful tone of welcome. "I have been expecting you." Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but the orphan of whom he made mention as our Johnny had been ailing, and he had waited to report him well. "Then he is well now," said the secretary, "now he ain't," said Sloppy. Mr. Sloppy, having shaken his head to a considerable extent, proceeded to remark that he thought Johnny must have took him from the minders. Being asked what he meant, he answered, "Then that come out upon him and particular is chest." Being requested to explain himself, he stated that, "There, or some of him, or you couldn't carve her over six bits." Pressed to fall back upon a nominative case, he opined, "That they was as red as ever we could be. But as long as they strikes out, sir," continued Sloppy, "they ain't so much. If they struck an image, that should be kept off." John Rooks with hope the child had had medical attendance. "Oh, yes," said Sloppy. He had been took to the doctor's shop once. "And what did the doctor call it?" Rooks with asked him. After some perplexed reflection, Sloppy answered, brightening. "He poured his something as was very long for spots," Rooks with suggested measles. "No," said Sloppy, with confidence, "ever so much longer than them, sir." Mr. Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider that it reflected credit on the poor little patient. "Mrs. Boughan will be sorry to hear this," said Rooksmith. "Mrs. Higdon said so, sir, when she kept it former. Hoping as our Johnny would work round." "But I hope he will," said Rooksmith, with a quick turn upon the messenger. "I hope so," answered Sloppy. "It all depends on a straw in innards." He then went on to say that whether Johnny had took him from the minders, or whether the minders had took him from Johnny, the minders had been sent home and had got him. Furthermore, that Mrs. Higdon's days and nights being devoted to our Johnny, who was never out of her lap, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon himself, and he had had Ray there a tight time. The ungainly piece of honesty beamed and blushed, as he said it, quite enraptured with the remembrance of having been serviceable. "Last night," said Sloppy, "when I was a turd in it the wheel, pretty light, the mango seemed to go not our Johnny's breathing. It began beautiful. Then, as it went out, it shook a little and got unsteady. Then, as he took the turn to come home, it had a rattle like, and lumbered a bit. Then it came smooth. And so it went on till our sketch knowed which was mango and which was our Johnny. Nor our Johnny, each sketch knowed either. For sometimes, when the mango lumbers, he says, "Me choke in granny," and Mrs. Higdon holds him up in her lap and says to me, "By the bitch, Sloppy, and we all stopped together. And when our Johnny gets his breathing again, our turns again, and we all goes on together." Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare and a vacant grin. He now contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed gush of tears, and under pretense of being heated, drew the under-part of his sleeve across his eyes with a singularly awkward, laborious, and round-about smear. "This is unfortunate," said Rokesmith. "I must go and break it to Mrs. Boffin. Stay you here, Sloppy." Sloppy stayed there, staring at the patterns of the paper on the wall, until the secretary, and Mrs. Boffin came back together. And with Mrs. Boffin was a young lady, Miss Bella Wilfer by name, who was better worth staring at it occurred to Sloppy, and the best of wall-papering. "Oh, my poor dear pretty little John Harman," exclaimed Mrs. Boffin. "Yes, Mum," said the sympathetic Sloppy. "You don't think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?" asked the pleasant creature with a wholesome cordiality. Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his inclinations, Sloppy threw back his head, and uttered a maliferous howl, rounded off with a sniff. "So bad is that," cried Mrs. Boffin. "I'm Betty Igden, not to tell me of it sooner." "Oh, think, she might have been mistrustful, Mum," answered Sloppy, hesitating. "Of what, for heaven's sake?" "I think she might have been mistrustful, Mum," returned Sloppy with submission, "of standing in our Johnny's light. There's so much trouble in illness, and so much expanse, and she's seen such a lot of its being objected to." "But she never kind of thought," said Mrs. Boffin, "that I would cradge as a dear child anything. Now, Mum, but she might have thought, at their bit like, of it standing in Johnny's light, and might have tried to bring him through it and be nounced." Sloppy knew his ground well, to conceal herself in sickness like a lower animal, to creep out of sight and coil herself away and die, had become this woman's instinct. To catch up in her arms the sick child who was dear to her, and hide it as if it were a criminal, and keep off all ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness and patience could supply, had become this woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and duty. The shameful accounts we read every week and the Christian year my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, the infamous records of small official inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by us, and hence these irrational, blind and obstinate prejudices, so astonishing to our magnificence, and having no more reason in them, guards save the Queen and confound their politics. No, than smoke has in coming from fire." "It's not a right place for the poor child to stay in," said Mrs. Boffin. "Tell us, dear Mr. Rexmith, what to do for the best?" He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very short. He could pave the way he said in half an hour, and then he would go down to Brentford. "Pray, take me," said Bella. Therefore a carriage was ordered of capacity to take them all, and in the meantime Sloppy was regaled, feasting alone in the secretary's room with a complete realisation of that fairy vision, meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding. In consequence of which his buttons became more important of public notice than before, with the exception of two or three about the region of the waistband, which modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement. Puncture to the time appeared the carriage, and the secretary. He sat on the box, and Mr. Sloppy graced the rumble. So, to the three magpires as before, where Mrs. Boffin and Mrs. Bella were handed out, and whence they all went on foot to Mrs. Betty Higgins. But on the way down they had stopped at a toy shop, and had bought that noble charger, a description of whose points and trappings had on the last occasion conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan, and also a Noah's ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice in him, and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of life size his brother officers in the guards might never have found him out. Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty Higgins' door, and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest corner with poor Johnny and her lap. "And how's my boy, Betty?" asked Mrs. Boffin, sitting down beside her. "He's bad. He's bad," said Betty, "I begin to be a feared he'll not be yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have gone to the power and the glory, and I have a mind that they're drawing him to them, leading him away." "No, no, no," said Mrs. Boffin. "I don't know why else," he clench his little hand, as if he'd had hold of a finger that I can't see. "Look at it," said Betty, opening the wrappers in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right hand lying closed upon his breast. "He's always so. It don't mind me. Is he asleep? No, I think not. You're not asleep, my Johnny." "No," said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself, and without opening his eyes. "Here's the lady, Johnny, and the horse." Johnny could bear the lady with complete indifference, but not the horse. Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile, unbeholding that splendid phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his arms. As it was much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could hold it by the mane and contemplate it, which he soon forgot to do. But Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs. Boffin not knowing want, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to understand. Being asked by her to repeat what he had said, he did so two or three times, and then it came out that he must have seen more than they supposed when he looked up to see the horse, for the murmur was, "Who is the boofer lady?" Now the boofer or beautiful lady was Bella, and whereas this notice from the poor baby would have touched her of itself, it was rendered more pathetic by the late melting of her heart to her poor little father, in their joke about the lovely woman. So Bella's behaviour was very tender and very natural when she'd kneeled on the brick floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with the child's admiration of what is young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady. "Now, my good dear Betty," said Mrs. Boffin, hoping that she saw her opportunity, and laying her hand persuasably on her arm. "We have come to remove Johnny from his cottage to where he can be taken better care of." Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman started up with blazing eyes and rushed at the door with the sick child. "Stand away from me, every one of you," she cried out wildly. "I'll see. What do you mean now? Let me come home, hey, all of you. I'll sooner kill the pretty and kill myself." "Stay, stay," said Rokesmith, soothing her. "You don't understand. I understand. It too well. I know too much about it. I've ran from it too many a year. No, never for me, nor for the child, while there's water enough in England to cover us." The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow creature alone. Yet it crops up as our slang goes, my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, in other fellow creatures, rather frequently. "It's been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine alive." cried old Betty. "I've done with you. I'd a fessent dawn window and start off before I'd ever let you in, if I'd known what you came for." But, catching sight of Mrs. Buffon's wholesome face, she relented, and crouching down by the dawn bending over her burden to hush it, said humbly, "Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and a good lord forgive me. I'm quick to take this fright, I know; and my head is some light with weary in them, watching." "There, there, there," returned Mrs. Buffon, "can, can, say no more of it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake any one of us might have made it in your place, and felt just as you do." "The lord, blessy," said the old woman, stretching out her hand. "Now, see, Betty," pursued the sweet, compassionate soul, holding the hand kindly. "What I really did mean, and what I should have began by saying out, if it'd only been a little wiser in India, we want to move, Johnny, to a place where there are non-but children, a place set up on purpose, for sick children, where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to non-but children, touch non-but children, comfort and cure, non-but children." "Is there really such a place?" asked the old woman with a gaze of wonder. "Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my own was a better place for the dear boy, I'd take into it, but indeed, indeed, it's not. You shall take him," returned Betty, firmly kissing the comforting hand. "Where you will, my dearie, I'm not so hard, but that I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and hear." This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw how woefully time had been lost. He dispatched Sloppy to bring the carriage to the door, caused the child to be carefully wrapped up, bade old Betty to get her bonneton, collected the toys, enabling the little fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with him, and had all things prepared so easily that they were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards were on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast was a paroxysm of mangling. At the children's hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah's ark, yellow bird, and the officer in the guards were made as welcome as their child, O'Ner, but the doctor set aside to Rokesmith. This should have been days ago, too late. However, they were all carried up into a fresh, airy room, and there Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform over his breast, on which were already arranged to give him heart and urge him to cheer up, the Noah's ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird, with the officer in the guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon parade. And at the bed's head was a coloured picture, beautiful to see, representing, as it were, another Johnny seated on the knee of some angel, surely, who loved little children, and marvellous fact to lie and stare at. Johnny had become one of a little family, all in little quiet beds, except two playing dominoes in little armchairs at a little table on the hearth. And on all the little beds were little platforms, whereon were to be seen doll's houses, woolly dogs with mechanical barks in them, not very dissimilar from the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow bird, tin armies, Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of the earth. As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering woman at his bed's head asked him what he said. It seemed that he wanted to know whether all these were brothers and sisters of his, so they told him yes. It seemed then that he wanted to know whether God had brought them all together there, so they told him yes again. They made out then that he wanted to know whether they would all get out of pain, so they answered yes to that question likewise, and made him understand that the reply included himself. Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very imperfectly developed, even in a state of health, that in sickness they were little more than monosyllabic. But he had to be washed and tended, and remedies were applied, and though those officers were far, far more skillfully and lightly done than ever anything had been done for him in his little life, so rough and short, they would have hurt and tired him but for an amazing circumstance which laid hold of his attention. This was no less than the appearance on his own little platform in pairs of all creation, on its way into his own particular arc, the elephant leading, and the fly, with a different sense of his size, politely bringing up the rear. A very little brother lying in the next bed, with a broken leg, was so enchanted by this spectacle that his delight exalted its enthralling interest, and so came rest and sleep. "I see, you're not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty?" whispered Mrs. Boffin. "No, Mom. Most willingly, oh, thankfully, with all my heart and soul." So they kissed him and left him there, and old Betty was to come back early in the morning. And nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain how that the doctor had said this should have been days ago, too late. But Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in mind, would be acceptable thereafter to that good woman who had been the only light in the childhood of desolate John Harmon dead and gone. Resolved that late at night he would go back to the bedside of John Harmon's namesake, and see how it fared with him. The family whom God had brought together were not all sleep, but were all quiet. From bed to bed a light womanly trade in a pleasant fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A little head would lift itself up into the softened light here and there to be kissed as the face went by, for these little patients are very loving, and would then submit itself to be composed to rest again. The might with the broken leg was restless and moaned, but after a while turned his face towards Johnny's bed, to fortify himself with a view of the ark, and fell asleep. Over most of the beds, the Tories were yet grouped as the children had left them when they last laid themselves down, and in their innocent grotesqueness and incongruity he might have stood for the children's dreams. The doctor came in, too, to see how it fared with Johnny, and he and Rokesmith stood together looking down with compassion on him. "What? What is it, Johnny?" Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an arm round to poor baby as he made a struggle. "Him!" said the little fellow. "Those?" The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the horse, the ark, the yellow bird, and the man in the guards, from Johnny's bed, softly placed them on that of his next neighbor, the might with the broken leg. With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith's face with his lips, said, "A kiss for the boofer, lady!" Having now bequeathed, all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny thus speaking, left it. End of book 2, chapter 9, chapter 10, a successor. Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey's brethren had found themselves exceedingly uncomfortable in their minds, because they were required to bury the dead, too, hopefully. But the Reverend Frank, inclining to the belief that they were required to do one or two other things, say, out of nine and thirty, calculated to trouble their consciences rather more, if they would think as much about them, held as peace. Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many sad warps and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not profess that they made him savagely wise. He only learned that the more he himself knew in his little, limited human way, the better he could distantly imagine what omniscience might know. Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that troubled some of his brethren, and profitably touched innumerable hearts, in a worse case than Johnny's, he would have done so out of the pity and humility of his soul. Reading them over Johnny, he thought of his own six children, but not of his poverty, and read them with dimmed eyes, and very seriously did he and his bright little wife, who had been listening, put down into the small grave and walk home arm in arm. There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the bar. Mr. Wegg argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an orphan himself, and could a better be desired? And why go beating about Brenford Bush's, seeking orphans for sooth, who had established no claim as upon you, and made no sacrifices for you, when here was an orphan ready to your hand, who had given up in your cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker? Mr. Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings. Nay, it was afterwards affirmed by a witness, who shall at present be nameless, that in the seclusion of the bower he poked out his wooden leg in the stage ballet manner, and executed a taunting or triumphant pirouette on the genuine leg, remaining to him. John Rokesmith's manner towards Mrs. Buffon at this time was more the manner of a young man towards a mother, than that of a secretary towards his employer's wife. It had always been marked by a subdued affectionate deference that seemed to have sprung up on the very day of his engagement. Whatever was odd in her dress or her ways had seemed to have no oddity for him. He had sometimes borne a quietly amused face in her company, but still it had seemed as if the pleasure her genial temper and radiant nature yielded him, could have been quite as naturally expressed in a tear as in a smile. The completeness of his sympathy with her fancy for having a little John Harman to protect Andrea, he had shown in every act and word, and now that the kind fancy was disappointed he treated it with a manly tenderness and respect for which you could hardly thank him enough. "But I do thank you, Mr. Rokesmith," said Mrs. Buffon, "and I thank you most kindly. You love children?" "I hope everybody does." "They ought," said Mrs. Buffon, "but we don't all of us do what we ought to do us." John Rokesmith replied. "Some among us supply the shortcomings of the rest. You have loved children well," Mr. Buffon has told me. "Not a bit better than he has, but that's his way. He puts all the good upon me. You speak rather sadly, Mr. Rokesmith." "Do I?" "It sounds to me so. Were you one of many children?" he shook his head. "An only child?" "No. There was another. Dead long ago." "Father or mother alive?" "Dead." "And the rest of your relations?" "Dead. If I ever had any living, I never heard of any." At this point of the dialogue, Bella came in with a light step. She paused at the door a moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire, perplexed by finding that she was not observed. "Now, don't mind an old lady's talk," said Mrs. Buffon, "but tell me, are you quite sure, Mr. Rokesmith, that you have never had a disappointment in love?" "Quite sure. Why do you ask me?" "Why, for this reason? Sometimes you have a kind of kept down manner with you, which is not like your age. You can't be thirty." "I am not yet, thirty." Deeming at high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed here to attract attention, begged Pardon and said she would go, fearing that she interrupted some matter of business. "Oh, no. Don't go," rejoined Mrs. Buffon, "because we are coming to business, instead of having begun it, and you belong to it as much now, my dear Bella, as I do. But I want my naughty to consult with us. Would somebody be so good as to find my naughty for me?" Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accompanied by Mr. Buffon at his jog-trot. Bella felt a little vague trepidation as to the subject matter of this same consultation, until Mrs. Buffon announced it. "Now, you come and sit by me, my dear," said that worthy soul, taking her comfortable place on a large ottoman in the centre of the room, and drawing her arm through Bella's. "And naughty, you sit here, and Mr. Rokesmith, you sit there. Now, you see, what I want to talk about is this. Mr. Mrs. Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible, which Mr. Rokesmith just now read to me out aloud for I ain't good at hand writings, offering to find me another little child to name and educate and bring up. "Well, this has set me thinking." "And she's a steam engineer, it," murmured Mr. Buffon, in an admiring parenthesis. "When she wants to begins, it might be so easy to start her, but once started, she's an engine." "This has set me thinking," I say," repeated Mrs. Buffon, cordially beaming under the influence of her husband's compliment, "and I have thought two things. First of all, that I have grown timid of reviving John Harmon's name. It's an unfortunate name, and I fancy I should reproach myself if I gave it to another dear child, and it proved again unlucky." "Now, whether," said Mr. Buffon, gravely propounding a case for his secretary's opinion, "whether one might call that a superstition?" "It is a matter of feeling with Mrs. Buffon," said Rokesmith gently. "The name has always been unfortunate. It has now this new unfortunate association connected with it. The name has died out. Why revive it? Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks?" "It has not been a fortunate name for me," said Bella, coloring, "or at least it was not until it led to my being here, but that is not the point in my thoughts. As we had given the name to the poor child, and as the poor child took so lovingly to me, I think I should feel jealous of calling another child by it. I think I should feel as if the name had become endeared to me, and I had no right to use it so." "And that's your opinion," remark Mr. Buffon, observant of the secretary's face, and again addressing him. "I say again it is a matter of feeling," returned the secretary. "I think Miss Wilfer's feeling very womanly and pretty." "Now give us your opinion, Noddy," said Mrs. Buffon. "My opinion, old lady," returned the golden dustman, "is your opinion." "Then," said Mrs. Buffon, "we agree not to revive John Harmon's name, but to let it rest in the grave. It is as Mr. Rokesmith says a matter of feeling, but law, how many matters are, matters of feeling. Well, and so I come to the second thing I thought of. You must know, Bella, my dear, and Mr. Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon, I further named to my husband, that it was comforting to think that how the poor boy would be benefited by John's own money, and protected from John's own fullownness." "Here, here," cried Mr. Buffon, "so she did, uncore." "No, not "anchore, Noddy, my dear," returned Mrs. Buffon, "because I'm going to say something else. I mean that, I am sure, as much as I still mean it, but this little death has made me ask myself the question seriously, whether I wasn't too bent upon pleasing myself. Else, why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to my liking? Wanted to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put my taste in likings by?" "Perhaps," said Bella, "and perhaps," she said it, with some little sensitiveness arising out of those old curious relations of hers towards the murdered man. "Perhaps, in reviving the name, you would not have liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He interested you very much." "Well, my dear," returned Mrs. Buffon, giving her a squeeze, "it's kind of you to find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and indeed to a certain extent, I believe it was so. But I'm afraid, not to the whole extent. However, that don't come in question now, because we have done with the name." "Laid it up as a remembrance," suggested Bella musingly. "Much better," said my dear, "laid it up as a remembrance." "Well, then, I've been thinking, if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be a pet, and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for its own sake." "Not pretty, then," said Bella. "No," returned Mrs. Buffon, stoically. "No, pre-possessing, then," said Bella. "No," returned Mrs. Buffon. "Not necessarily so, that's as it may happen. A well-disposed boy comes in my way, who may be even a little wanting in such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious, and requires a helping end, and deserves it. If I am very much an earnest, and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of him." Here the footman, whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion, appeared, and crossing to Rooksmith, apologetically announced the objectionable sloppy. The four members of Council looked at one another and paused. "Shall he be brought here, ma'am?" asked Rooksmith. "Yes," said Mrs. Buffon, whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared presenting sloppy, and retired, much disgusted. The consideration of Mrs. Buffon had clothed Mr. Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from Rooksmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art with a view to the concealment of the cohearing and sustaining buttons. But so much more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy's form, and the strongest resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council, a perfect Argus in the way of buttons, shining and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal at the dazzle spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hat-band of wholesale capacity, which was fluted behind from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black bunch from which the imagination shrunk, discomforted, and the reason revolted. Some special powers of riches legs were endowed, had already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees, while similar gifts in his arms had raised his coat sleeve from his wrists, and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set forth, with the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a yawning golf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed. "And how is Betty, my good fellow?" Mrs. Baffen asked him. "Thank you, Mum," said Sloppy, "she do pretty nicely, and changing her duty, and many thanks for the tea, and all of five years, and wishing to know the family's elves." "Have you just come, Sloppy?" "Yes, Mum." "Then you have not had your dinner yet." "Now, Mum, but I mean, too, for I ain't forgotten your handsome orders. I was never to go away without having had a good in off of meat, and beer, and pudding. Oh, no, there was four of them, for I'll reckon them up when I had them." "Meet one, beer, too, vegetable-free, and which was four? Oh, why, pudding! He was four." He had Sloppy threw his head back, and opened his mouth wide and laughed rapturously. "How are the two poor little minders?" asked Mrs. Baffen. "Starking right out, Mum, and come around beautiful." Mrs. Baffen looked on the other three members of council, and then said beckoning with her finger. "Sloppy?" "Yes, Mum." "Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here, every day?" "Off, of all four on, Mum." "How, Mum?" Sloppy's feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg of the knee. "Yes, and should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious and deserving?" "Oh, Mum." "But there's Mrs. Hicken," said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures, drawing back and checking his head with very serious meaning. "There's Mrs. Hicken. Mrs. Hicken cowed before all. No one can ever be better French to me than Mrs. Hicken's been, and she must be turned for, but, Mrs. Hicken, where would Mrs. Hicken be if she were turned for?" At the mere thought of Mrs. Hicken in this inconceivable affliction, Mr. Sloppy's countenance became pale and manifested the most distrestful emotions. "You are as right as right can be, Sloppy," said Mrs. Baffen, "and for be it for me to tell you otherwise, it shall be seen too. If Betty Hicken can be turned for all the same, you shall come here and be taken care of for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the turning." "Heaven as to that, Mum," answered the ecstatic Sloppy, "a turning might be done in an eye, don't you see? I could be you in a day and turning in at night. I don't want no sleep, I don't, or even if I, anyway, should want a wink or two." At his Sloppy, after a moment's apologetic reflection, "I could take him turning." After him turning many a time, and enjoyed him, wonderful. "On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr. Sloppy kissed Mrs. Baffen's hand, and then detaching himself from that good creature that he might have room enough for his feelings, threw back his head, opened his mouth wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was creditable to his tenderness of heart, but suggested that he might, on occasion, give some offence to the neighbours. The rather, as the footman looked in and begged pardon, finding he was not wanted, but excused himself on the ground that he thought it was cats. End of Book Two, Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven, Some Affairs of the Heart. Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with his little windows, like the eyes and needles, and his little doors, like the covers of school-books, was very observant indeed of the object of her quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr. Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy; it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean; it was simply that she loathed the irresponsible Bradley with all primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil, though of invisible ink, many little treaters calculated to astonish the pupils would have come bursting through the dry sums in school time under the warming influence of Miss Peecher's bosom. For oftentimes when school was not, and her calm leisure and calm little house were her own, Miss Peecher would commit to the confidential slate, an imaginary description of how, upon a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in the market garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form, bent over the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some compactness, and breathed in a low voice the words "Emma Peecher" willt thou be my own, after which the womanly form's head reposed upon the manly form's shoulder, and the nighting gales tuned up. Though all unseen and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the school exercises. Was geography in question? He would come triumphantly flying out of Vesuvius and Etna, ahead of the lava, and would boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland and would float but gestantly down the Ganges and the Nile. Did history conical a king of men? Behold him in pepper and salt pantaloons with his watch-god round his neck? Were copies to be written, in capital B's and Aches, most of the girls under Miss Peecher's tuition were half a year ahead of every other letter in the alphabet? And mental arithmetic, administered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe of fabulous extent; four score and four neckties at two and nine penceapony, two groves of silver watches at four pounds fifteen and sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillings, and many similar superfluities. The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes in Bradley's direction, soon a prize, Miss Peecher, that Bradley was more preoccupied than had been his won't, and more given to strolling about with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult in his mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that together, combining under the head this present appearances and the intimacy with Charlie Hexham, and ranging under the head that, the visit to his sister, the watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it. "I wonder," said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on a half holiday afternoon, "what they call Hexham's sister?" Mary Ann, at her needlework, attended an attentive, held her arm up. "Well, Mary Ann," she is named Lizzie, Mom. "She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Ann," returned Miss Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. "Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Ann?" Mary Ann laid down her work. Rose hooked herself behind as being under categorization and replied, "No, it is a corruption, Miss Peecher. Who gave her that name?" Miss Peecher was going on from the mere force of habit when she checked herself on Mary Ann's evincing theological impatience to strike in with her godfathers and her godmothers and said, "I mean, of what name is it a corruption?" Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher. "Right, Mary Ann. Whether there were any Lizzie's, in the early Christian church, must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful." Miss Peecher was exceedingly sage here. "Speaking correctly, we say then that Hexham's sister is called Lizzie, not Lizzie's name, so do we not, Mary Ann?" "We do, Miss Peecher. And where?" Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent fiction of conducting the examination in a semi-official manner for Mary Ann's benefit, not her own. "Where does this young woman who is called but not named Lizzie live?" "Think now, before answering." "In Church Street, Smith Square, by Millbank, Mom." "In Church Street, Smith Square, by Millbank," repeated Miss Peecher, as if possessed by the forehand of the book in which it was written. "Exactly so. And what occupation does this young woman pursue, Mary Ann? Take time." She has a place of trust and outfitters in the city, ma'am. "Oh," said Miss Peecher, pondering on it, but smoothly had it in a confirmatory tone, "at an outfitters in the city. Yes." "And Charlie?" Mary Ann was receding when Miss Peecher stared. "I mean, Hexam, Miss Peecher. I should think you did, Mary Ann. I'm glad to hear you do." "And Hexam?" says Mary Ann, went on. "That he is not pleased with his sister, and that his sister won't be guided by his advice, and persists in being guided by somebody else's, and that Missy hits down? Can we across the garden?" exclaimed Miss Peecher, with a flushed glance at the looking glass. "You have answered very well, Mary Ann. You are forming an excellent habit of arranging your thoughts clearly. That will do." The discreet Mary Ann resumed her seat, and her silence, and stitched, and stitched, and was stitching when the schoolmaster's shadow came in before him, announcing that he might be instantly expected. "Good evening, Miss Peecher," he said, pursuing the shadow and taking its place. "Good evening, Mr. Headstone. Mary Ann, a chair." "Thank you," said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained manner. "This is but a flying visitor. I've looked in on my way to ask a kindness of you as a neighbor." "Did you say, on your way, Mr. Headstone?" asked Miss Peecher. "On my way to where I am going." Church Street, Smith Square by Millbank, repeated Miss Peecher in her own thoughts. Charlie Hexen has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will probably be back before me. As we leave my house empty, I took the liberty of telling him I would leave the key here. Would you kindly allow me to do so?" "Sittingly, Mr. Headstone." "Going for an evening walk, sir?" Partly for a walk, and partly for one business. Business in Church Street, Smith Square by Millbank repeated Miss Peecher to herself. "Having said which," pursued Bradley, laying his dorky on the table, "I must be already going. There is nothing I can do for you, Miss Peecher." "Thank you, Mr. Headstone, in which direction?" "In the direction of Westminster." "Millbank," Miss Peecher repeated in her own thoughts again. "No, thank you, Mr. Headstone. I not trouble you." "You couldn't trouble me," said the schoolmaster. "Ah," returned Miss Peecher, though not allowed, "but you can trouble me." And for all her quiet manner and her quiet smile, she was full of trouble as he went his way. She was right touching his destination. He held a straighter course for the house of the doll's dressmaker as the wisdom of his ancestors, exemplified, and the construction of the intervening streets would let him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed idea. It had been an immovable idea since he first set eyes upon her. It seemed to him as if all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as if all that he could restrain in himself he had restrained, and the time had come, in a rush, in a moment, when the power of self-command had departed from him. Love at first sight is a trite expression quite sufficiently discussed, enough that in certain smoldering natures like this man's that passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire does an array of wind when other passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be broached, and these times generally some form of tribute to somebody for something that never was done, or if ever done, that was done by somebody else. So these less ordinary natures may lie by for years, ready on the touch of an instant, to burst into flame. The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of being vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried face. Truly, in his breast, their lingered, a resentful shame to find himself defeated by this passion for Charlie Hexam's sister, though in the very self-same moments he was concentrating himself upon the object of bringing the passion to a successful issue. He appeared before the doll's dressmaker, sitting alone at her work. "A-ho!" thought that sharp young personage. "It's you, is it? I know your tricks and your manners, my friend." " Hexam's sister," said Badly Headstone, "is not come home yet." "You are quite a conjurer," returned Miss Ren. "I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her." "Do you?" returned Miss Ren. "Sit down. I hope it's mutual." Badly glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again, bending over the work, and said, trying to conquer doubt and hesitation. "I hope you don't imply that my visit will be unacceptable to Hexam's sister." "There. Don't call her that. I can't pay you to call her that," returned Miss Ren, snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient snaps. "For I don't like Hexam." "Indeed." "No," Miss Ren wrinkled her nose to express dislike. "So, Fish, thinks only of himself. The way with all of you." "The way with all of us. Then you don't like me." "So, so?" replied Miss Ren, with a shrug and a laugh. "Don't know much about you." "But I was not aware. It was the way with all of us," said Bradley, returning to the accusation a little injured. "Why don't you say some of us?" "Meaning," returned the little creature, "every one of you, but you." "Ha-ha-ha-ha. Now, look, this lady in the face. This is Mrs. Truth, the honourable, full-dressed." Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation, which had been lying on its face on her bench. While of the needle and thread, she fastened the dress on at the back, and looked from it to her. "I stand, the honourable Mrs. Tea, on my bench in this corner against the wall, where her blue eyes can shine upon you." pursued Miss Ren, doing so, and making two little dabs at him in the air with her needle, as if you pricked him with it in his own eyes. "And I defy you to tell me, with Mrs. Tea, for a witness, what you have come here for?" "To see, Hexam's sister." "You don't say so." retorted Miss Ren, hitching her chin, "but on whose account?" "Her own." "Oh, Mrs. Tea!" exclaimed Miss Ren. "You hear him." "To reason with her?" pursued Bradley, half humoring, what was present, and half angry with what was not present, for her own sake. "Oh, Mrs. Tea!" exclaimed the dressmaker, "for her own sake," repeated Bradley warming, "and, for her brothers, and as a perfectly disinterested person." "Really, Mrs. Tea?" remarked the dressmaker. "Since it comes to this, we must positively turn you with your face to the wall." She had hardly done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived, and showed some surprise on seeing Bradley headstone there, and Jenny shaking her little fist at him close before her eyes, and the honourable Mrs. Tea, with her face to the wall. "Here's a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear," said the knowing Miss Ren, "come to talk with you, for your own sake, and your brothers. Think of that. I'm sure there ought to be no third party present at anything so very kind and so very serious, and so, if you remove the third party upstairs, my dear, the third party will retire." Lizzie took the hand, which the doll's dressmaker held out to her, for the purpose of being supported away, but only looked at her for an inquiring smile, and made no other movement. "The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when you'd love to herself," said Miss Ren, her back being so bad and a leg so queer, so she can't recite gracefully unless you help her with this Z. "She can do now better than stay where she is," returned Lizzie, releasing the hand and laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny's curls, and then to Bradley, "from Charlie, sir?" In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley rose to place a chair for her, and then returned to his own. "Strictly speaking," said he, "I come from Charlie because I left him only a little while ago, but I am not commissioned by Charlie. I come of my own spontaneous act." With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny Ren sat looking at him with a watchful, side-long look. Lizzie, in her different way, sat looking at him too. "The fact is," began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some difficulty in articulating his words, "the consciousness of which rendered his manner still more ungainly and undecided." Truth is that Charlie, having no secrets from me to the best of my belief, has confided that the whole of this matter took me. He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked, "What matters, sir?" I thought, returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her, and seeming to try in vain to sustain it for the look dropped as it lighted on her eyes, that it might be so superfluous to be almost impertinent to enter upon a definition of it. My illusion was to this matter of your having put aside your brother's plans for you, and, given the preference to those of Mr… I believe the name is Mr. Eugene Rayburn. He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another an easy look at her, which dropped like the last. Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and began with new embarrassment. Your brother's plans were communicated to me when he first had them in his thoughts. In point of fact, he spoke to me here about them when I was last here, when we were walking back together, and when the impression was fresh upon me of having seen his sister. There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dressmaker here removed one of her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned the honourable Mrs. T with her face to the company. That done she fell into her former attitude. "I approved of his idea," said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering to the doll, and unconsciously resting there longer than it had rested on Lizzy. Both because your brother ought naturally to be the originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to promote it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure; I should have taken inexpressible interest in promoting it. Therefore, I must acknowledge that when your brother was disappointed, I do was disappointed. I wish to avoid reservation or concealment, and I fully acknowledge that. He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At all events he went on, with much greater firmness and force of emphasis. There was a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious tight screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching palm of his left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was unwilling to cry out. "I am a man of strong feelings, and I have strongly felt this disappointment. I do strongly feel it. I don't show what I feel. Some of us are obliged to bitually to keep it down, to keep it down, but to return to your brother. He has taken the matter so much to heart that he has remonstrated, and in my presence he remonstrated, with Mr. Eugene Rayburn, if that be the name. He did so quite ineffectually, as anyone not blind to the real character of Mr. Mr. Eugene Rayburn would readily suppose. He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look, and his face turned from burning red to white, and from white back to burning red, and so for the time to lasting deadly white. Finally, I resolved to come here alone and appeal to you. I resolved to come here alone and entreat you to retract the course you have chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger, a person of most insolent behaviour to your brother and others, to prefer your brother and your brother's friend. Lizzie Hexen had changed colour when those changes came over him, and her face now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear, but she answered him very steadily. "I cannot doubt, Mr. Headstone, your visitors were meant. You have been so good a friend to Charlie that I have no right to doubt it. I have nothing to tell Charlie, but that I accepted the help to which he so much objects before he made any plans for me, or certainly before I knew of any. It was considerably and delicately offered, and there were reasons that had wait with me which should be his dear to Charlie's to me. I have now more to say to Charlie on this subject." His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of himself and limitation of her words to her brother. "I should have told Charlie if he had come to me," she resumed, as though it were an afterthought. "That Jenny and I find our teacher very able and very patient, and that she takes great pains with us. So much so that we have said to her, we hope in a very little while to be able to go on by ourselves. Charlie knows about teachers, and I should also have told him, for his satisfaction, that ours comes from an institution where teachers are regularly brought up." "I should like to ask you," said badly headstone, grinding his words slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill. "I should like to ask you, if I may without offence, whether you would have objected." "No, rather. I should like to say, if I may, without offence, that I wish I had the opportunity of coming here with your brother, and devoting my poor abilities and experience to your service." "Thank you, Mr. Headstone. But I fear," he pursued after pause, furtively wrenching at the seat of his chair with one hand, as if he would wrench the chair to pieces, and gloomily observing her while her eyes were cast down, "that my humble services would not have found much favour with you." She made no reply, and the poor, stricken wretch sat contending with himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands. "There is only one thing more," I had to say, "but it is the most important. There is a reason against this matter. There is a personal relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It might—I don't say it would, it might—in use you to think differently. To proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview on the subject?" "With Charlie, Mr. Headstone?" "With—well," he answered, breaking off, "yes, say with him, too. Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another interview under more favourable circumstances before the whole case can be submitted?" "I don't," said Lizzie, shaking her head, "understand your meaning, Mr. Headstone. Limit my meaning for the present," he interrupted, "to the whole case being submitted to you in another interview." "What case, Mr. Headstone? What is wanting to it?" "You—you shall be informed in the other interview." Then he said, as if in a burst of irrepressible despair, "I—I leave it all incomplete. There is a spell upon me, I think." And then added almost as if he asked for pity. "Good night!" He held out his hand, as she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it. A strange tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved us by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone. The doge dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat down near her. Then eyeing Lizzie, as she had previously eyed radly in the door, Miss Ren chopped at very sudden and keen chop, in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaning back in her chair with folded arms, and thus expressed herself. "Hmm. If he—I mean, of course, my dear, the party was coming to court me when the time comes should be that sort of man. He may spare himself the trouble. He wouldn't do to be tottered about and made useful. He'd take fire and blow up, while he was about it." "And so you would be rid of him," said Lizzie, humoring her. "Not so easily," returned Miss Ren. "He wouldn't blow up alone. He'd carry me up with him. I know his tricks and his manners." "Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?" asked Lizzie. "I mightn't exactly want to do it, my dear," returned Miss Ren. "But a lot of gunpowder among lighted looser for matches in the next room. Might almost as well be here." "He is a very strange man," said Lizzie thoughtfully. "I wish he was so very strange a man to be a total stranger," answered the sharp little thing. It being Lizzie's regular occupation, when they were a loan of any evening, to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the doll's dressmaker, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that were much in need of such a dawning rain. "Not now, Lizzie dear," said Jenny, "let us ever talk by the fire." With those words, she in her turn loosened her friend's dark hair, and it dropped of its own weight over her bosom and two rich masses. But I needed to compare the colours and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed to me a touch or two of her nimble hands as that she herself laying a cheek on one of the dark folds seemed blinded by her own clustering curls to orbit the fire, while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie were revealed without obstruction in the sombre light. "Let us have a talk," said Jenny, "about Mr. Eugene Rayburn." Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair, and if it were not a star, which it couldn't be, it was an eye, and if it were an eye, it was Jenny Ren's eye, bright and watchful as the birds whose name she had taken. "Why about Mr. Rayburn?" Lizzie asked. "For no better reason because I'm in the humour, I wonder whether he's rich?" "No, not rich." "Poor?" "I think so, for a gentleman." "Ah, to be sure, yes, he's a gentleman, not of us, or to see." A shake of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer softly spoken. "Oh, no, oh, no." The doll dressmaker had an arm round her friend's waist, adjusting the arm. She slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair where it fell over her face. Then the eye down there, under lighter shadows, sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful. "When he turns up, he shan't be a gentleman. I'll very soon send him pecking if he is. However, he's not Mr. Rayburn. I haven't captivated him. I am wondering whether anybody has, Lizzie." "It is very likely." "Is it very likely?" "I wonder who." "Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him and that he may love her dearly?" "Perhaps, I don't know. What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were a lady?" "I am a lady," she repeated, laughing, "such a fancy." "Yes, but say, just as a fancy, and for instance." "I, a lady. I, a poor girl who used to row poor father on the river. I who would row poor father out and home on the very night when I saw him for the first time. I who was made so timid by his looking at me, that I got up and went out." "He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady," thought Miss Ren. "I, a lady," Lizzie went on in a low voice with her eyes upon the fire. "I, with poor father's grave, not even cleared of undeserved stain and shame, and he tried to clear it for me. I, a lady." "Only as a fancy, and for instance," urged Miss Ren. "Too much, Jenny dear, too much. My fancy's not able to get that far." As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and abstractedly. "But I'm in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after all, I am a poor little thing, and I have a hard day with my bad child. Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do, when you lived in that cheery old house, that it once been a windmill. Look in the—" "What was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I don't like?" "The hallow, down by the flair." "Ah, that's the name. You can find a lady there, I know." "More easily than I can make one of such material is myself, Jenny. The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked thoughtfully down." "Well," said the doll's dressmaker, "we have found our lady," Lizzie nodded and asked. "Shall she be rich? She'd better be, as he's poor." "She is very rich." "Shall she be handsome?" "Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be." "She is very handsome." "What does she say about him?" asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice, watchful through an intervening silence of the face looking down at the fire. "She's glad, glad to be rich, that he may have the money. She's glad, glad to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her." "Her poor heart." "Hey, her poor heart!" said Miss Ren. "Her heart is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in and care for and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful, like an never come near. "I only put me in that empty place. I only try, how little I mine myself. Only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be much better than you are, through me who am so much worse and hardly worth the thinking of beside you." As the face looking at the fire had become exalted and forgetful in the rapture of these words, the little creature, openly clearing away her fair hair with her disengaged hand, had gazed at it with earnest attention and something like alarm. Now that the speak of ceased, the little creature laid down her head again and moaned. "I'll me, I'll me, I'll me." "In pain, dear Jenny," asked Lizzy as if awakened, "yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, lay me down. Don't go out on my sight tonight. Knock the door and get close to me." Then turning away her face, she said in a whisper to herself, "My Lizzy, my poor Lizzy. Oh, my blessed children, come back in the long bright slanting rose and come for her, not me. She wants help more than I, my blessed children." She had stretched her hands up with that higher and better look, and now she turned again and folded them round Lizzy's neck and rocked herself on Lizzy's breast. End of Book 2 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 More Birds of Prey Rogue-riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the rigors and the mast, awe and blockmakers and the boat-builders of the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship's hole stored full of water-side characters. Some no better than himself, some very much better, and none much worse. The hole, albeit in a gentle way, not over-nice in its choice of company, was rather shy in reference to the honour of cultivating the Rogue's acquaintance, more frequently giving him the cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom more never drinking with him unless at his own expense. A part of the hole indeed contained so much public spirit and private virtue that not even this strong leverage could move it to good fellowship with the tainted accuser. But there may have been the drawback on this magnanimous morality, that its exponents held a true witness before justice to be the next unnabilly and accursed character to a false one. Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr. Rydehood might have found the hole a mere grave as to any means it would yield him of getting a living. But Ms. Pleasant Rydehood had some little position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the smallest of small scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was popularly called a "leaving shop," by lending insignificant sums on insignificant articles of property deposited with her as security. In her four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already in her fifth year of this way of trade. Her deceased mother had established the business, and on that parent's demise she had appropriated a secret capital of fifteen chillings to establishing herself in it. The existence of such capital in a pillow being the last intelligible confidential communication made to her by the departed to force it coming to dropsical conditions of snuff and gin incompatible equally with coherence and existence. Why christened Pleasant? The late Mrs. Rydehood might possibly have been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no information on that point. Pleasant, she found herself, and she couldn't help it. She had not been consulted on the question any more than on the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts to want a name. Similarly, she found her self-possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye, derived from her father, which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meager, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as she really was. As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain creatures to a certain point, so not to make the comparison disrespectfully, present Rydehood had it in the blood, or had been trained, to regard seamen within certain limits as her prey. Show her a man in a blue jacket, and figuratively speaking, she pinned him instantly. Yet all things considered, she was not of an evil mind or an unkindly disposition. For, observe how many things were to be considered, according to her own unfortunate experience. Show, present Rydehood, a wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her a christening, and she saw a little heathen personage, having a quiet superfluous name bestowed upon it in as much as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet, which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and banged out of everybody's way until it should grow big enough to shove and bang. Show her a funeral, and she saw an unremunutive ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring a temporary gentility on performers at an immense expense and representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a leaven strap, and being discharged hurt her. All things considered, therefore, present Rydehood, was not so very, very bad. There was even a touch of romance in her, of such romance as could creep into Limehouse Hole, and maybe sometimes of a summer evening when she stood with folded arms at her shop-door, looking from the reeking street to the sky where the sun was setting. She may have had some vapourous visions of far-off islands in the southern seas, or elsewhere, not being geographically particular, where it would be good to roam with a congenial partner among groves of breadfruit, waiting for ships to be wafted from the hollow ports of civilization, for sailors to be got the better of were essential to Miss Plesson's Eden. Not on a summer evening, yet you come to her little shop-door, when a certain man standing over against the house on the opposite side of the street took notice of her. That was on a cold, shrewd, windy evening after dark. Pleasant Rydehood, shared with most of the lady inhabitants of the whole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a fight, or other disturbance in the whole, the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters, universally twisting their back hair as they came along, and many of them, in the hurry of the moment, carrying their back combs in their mouths. It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with his hand, little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some horrible sweets, these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the leaving shop, was displayed the inscription "seaman's boarding house." Taking notice of pleasant ride-a-hood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she was still winding herself up when he stood close before her. "Is your father at home?" said he. "I think he is," returned pleasant, dropping her arms, "came in." It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance. Her father was not at home and pleasant knew it. "A tiger's seat by the fire?" were her hospitable words when she'd got him in. "Men of your calling are always welcome here." "Thank ye," said the man. His manner was the manner of a sailor and his hands of the hands of a sailor, except that they were smooth. Peasant had an eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused color and texture of the hands. Sunburned, though they were, a sharply as she noticed their unmistakable looseness and suppleness. As he sat himself down with his left arm, carelessly thrown across his left leg, a little above the knee, and the right arm is carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair with the hand curved, half open and half shut, as if it had just let go a rope. "Might ye be looking for a board in house?" Peasant inquired, taking her observant stand on one side of the fire. "I don't rightly know my plans yet," returned the man. "You ain't looking for a leaving shop?" "No," said the man. "No," assented Peasant, "you've got too much of an outfit on you for that, but if you should want either, this is both." "Aye, aye," said the man, glancing round the place. "I know. I've been here before." "Did you leave anything when you were here before?" asked Peasant with the view to principal and interest. "No," the man shook his head. "I'm pretty sure you never bored it here." "No," the man again shook his head. "What did you do here when you were here before?" asked Peasant. "For I don't remember you." "It's not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door one night, on the lower step there, while a shipmate of mine looked into speech your father. I remember the place well, looking very curiously round it." "Might that have been long ago?" "Aye, a goodish bit ago, when I came off mine ass voyage." "Then you've not been to sea lately?" "No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore." "Then, to be sure, that accounts for your hands." The man with the keen look, a quick smile and a change of manner, caught her up. "You're a good observer." "Yes, that accounts for my hands." Peasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it suspiciously. Not only was his change of manner, though very sudden, quite collected, but his former manner, which he resumed, had a certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it, that were half-threatening. "Will your father be long?" he inquired. "I don't know, I can't say." "As you suppose he was at home, it would seem that he has just gone out. How's that?" "I suppose he had come home," Peasant explained. "Oh, you suppose he had come home?" "He has been some time out. How's that?" "I don't want to deceive your fathers on the river in his boat." "That's the old work," asked the man. "I don't know what you mean," said Peasant, shrinking a step back. "What on earth do you want?" "I don't want to hurt your father. I don't want to say I might, if I chose. I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there? There shall be no secrets from you, you shall be by." "And plainly, Miss Riderhood, there's nothing to be got out of me, or made of me. I'm not good for the leaving shop. I'm not good for the boarding-house. I'm not good for anything in your way, to the extent of six pinneth of hepence. Put the idea aside, and we shall get on together." "But you're a seafaring man?" argued Peasant, as if that were a sufficient reason for his being good for something in her way. "Yes, and now I have been, and I may be again. But I'm not for you. Don't you take my word for it?" The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Peasant's hair in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at the man. In taking stock of his familiarly worn, rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist, ready to his hand, and of a whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted club was a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of his loose outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her, but, with these appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity of bristling, oakum-coloured head and whisker, he had a formidable appearance. "Won't you take my word for it?" he asked again. Peasant answered with a short, dumb nod. He rejoined with another short, dumb nod. Then he got up, and stood with his arms folded in front of the fire, looking down into it occasionally, as she stood with her arms folded, leaning against the side of the chimney-piece. "To while away the time till your father comes," he said. "Pray, is there much robbing and murdering of seamen about the water-side now?" "No," said Peasant. "Any?" "Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about rack-cliff and whopping and up that way, but who knows how many are true?" "To be sure, and it don't seem necessary." "That's what I say," observed Peasant. "What is the reason for it?" "Blessed sailors. It ain't as if they ever could keep what they have without it." "You're right. Their money may be soon got out of them without violence," said the man. "Of course it may," said Peasant. "And then they ship again and get more. And the best thing for them too, the ship again, as soon as ever, they can be brought to it. They never so well off as when they're afloat." "I'll tell you why I ask," pursued the visitor, looking up from the fire. "I was once beset that way myself and left for dead." "No," said Peasant. "Where did it happen?" "It happened," returned the man with a ruminate of air as he drew his right hand across his chin and dipped the other in the pocket of his rough outer coat. "It happened somewhere about here, as I reckon. I don't think it can have been a mile from here." "Were you drunk?" asked Peasant. "I was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been drinking, you understand. A mouthful did it." Peasant, with a grave look, shook her head, importing that she understood the process, but decidedly disapproved. "Fear trade is one thing," said she, "but that's another. No one has a right to carry on with Jack in that way." "The sentiment does you credit," returned the man with a grim smile and added in a mutter, "the more so as I believe it's not your father's." "Yes, I had a bad time of it that time. I lost everything and had a sharp struggle for my life week as I was." "Did you hit the parties punished?" asked Peasant. "A tremendous punishment followed," said the man more seriously, but it was not of my bringing about. "Of who's then?" asked Peasant. The man pointed upward with his forefinger and, slowly recovering that hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing her inherited eye to bear upon him, Peasant Riderhood felt more and more uncomfortable. His manner was so mysterious, so stern, so self-possessed. "Anyways," said the damsel, "I am glad punishment followed, and I say so. Fear trade with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of violence. I am as much against deeds of violence being done to seafaring men as seafaring men can be themselves. I am of the same opinion as my mother was when she was living. Fear trade, my mother used to say, but no robbery or no blows." In the way of trade, Miss Peasant would have taken, and indeed did take when she could, as much as thirty shillings a week for board, there would be deer at five, and likewise conducted the leaving business upon correspondingly equitable principles. Yet she had that tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity. At the moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman's champion, even against her father whom she seldom otherwise resisted. But she was here interrupted by her father's voice, exclaiming angrily, "Now, Paul Parrot!" and by her father's hat, being heavily flung from his hand and striking her face. A custom to such occasional manifestations of his sense of parental duty, Peasant merely wiped her face on her hair, which of course had tumbled down before she twisted it up. This was another common procedure on the part of the Ladies of the Whole, when heated by verbal, offistic altercation. "Blessed if I believe such a Paul Parrot as you was ever learnt to speak!" Groud, Mr. Ryder had, stooping to pick up his hat, and making a faint at her with his head and right elbow, for he took the delicate subject of robbing the seaman in extraordinary dudgeon, and was out of humour too. "What are you, Paul Parrot in it now? I eat you've got nothing to do but fold your arms and stand a Paul Parrot in all night." Let her alone, urged the man. She was only speaking to me. "Let her alone too," retorted Mr. Ryder, eyeing him all over. "Do you know she's my daughter?" "Yes." "And you know that I don't have no Paul Parrot in on the part of my daughter." "No, nor yet that I won't take no Paul Parrot in from no man, and who may you be and what may you want." "How can I tell you until you're silent?" returned the other fiercely. "Well," said Mr. Ryder had, quailing a little, "I am willingly resolent for the purpose of hearing, but don't Paul Parrot me." "Are you thirsty?" "You," the man asked in the same fierce short way after returning his look. "Why, naturally," said Mr. Ryder had, "I always thirsty," indignant at the absurdity of the question. "More will you drink," demanded the man. "Sherry wine," returned Mr. Ryder had in the same sharp tone, "if you're capable of it." The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign, and begged the favour of Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle. "With the cork undrawn," he added emphatically, looking at her father. "I'll take my Alfred David," muttered Mr. Ryder had, solely relaxing into a dark smile, "that you know a move." "Do I know you?" "No, I don't know you." The man replied, "No, you don't know me." And so they stood looking at one another, sololy enough, until Pessent came back. "The small glass is on the shelf," said Ryder, to his daughter, "give me the one without a foot. All gets me living by the sweat of my brow, and it's good enough for me." This had a modest, self-denying appearance, but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the impossibility of standing the glass upright, while there was anything in it, it required to be emptied as soon as filled, Mr. Ryder had managed to drink in the proportion of three to one. With his fortune-artices goblet ready in his hand, Mr. Ryder had sat down on one side of the table before the fire, and a strange man on the other. Pessent occupying a stool between the latter and the fireside. The background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats, shirts, hats, and other old articles, on leaving, had a general dim resemblance to human listeners, especially where a shiny black sourster, suit, and hat hung, looking very like a clumsy mariner with his back to the company, who were so curious to overhear that he paused for the purpose with his coat half pulled on and his shoulders up to his ears in the uncompleted action. The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle, and next examined the top of the cork. Satisfied that it had not been tampered with, he slowly took from his breast pocket a rusty clasp knife, and, with a cork screw in the handle, opened the wine. That done, he looked at the cork, and screwed it from the cork screw, laid each separately on the table, and, with the end of the sailor's knot of his neck-o-chief, dusted the inside of the neck of the bottle. All this, with great deliberation. At first Ryderhood had sat, with his footless glass extended at arm's length fulfilling, while a very deliberate stranger seemed absorbed in his preparations. But gradually his arm reverted home to him, and his glass was lowered and lowered until he rested it upside down upon the table. By the same degrees his attention became concentrated on the knife, and now as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Ryderhood stood up, leaned over the table to look closer at the knife, and stared from it to him. "What's the matter?" asked the man. "Why? Oh, I know that knife!" said Ryderhood. "Yes, I dare say you do." He motioned to him to hold up his glass and filled it. Ryderhood emptied it to the last drop, and began again. "That there knife!" "Stop!" said the man, composedly. "I was going to drink to your daughter." "Your health?" Miss Ryderhood. "That knife was an eye for a seaman named George Redfoot." It was. "That seaman was well-beknown to me." He was. "What's come to him?" "Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape. He looked," said the man, "very horrible after it." "Oh, no, what?" said Ryderhood, with a frowning stare. After he was killed. "Killed? Who killed him?" Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and Ryderhood emptied it, looking amazingly from his daughter to his visitor. "Here, don't mean to tell an honest man." He was recommencing with his empty glass in his hand when his eye became fascinated by the stranger's outer coat. He leaned across the table to see it nearer, touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve lining, the man in his perfect composure offering not the least objection, and exclaimed, "It, marble a heif, as this ear coat, was George Redfoot's, too." "You all right?" He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last time you ever will see him in this world. "He's my belief, hear me, tell me, my face, you killed him!" exclaimed Ryderhood, but nevertheless allowing his glass to be filled again. The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of confusion. "Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap," said Ryderhood, after staring at him and tossing his last glass wall down his throat. "Lits, now what a mate of you! Say something plain!" "I will," returned the other, leaning forward across the table and speaking in a low, impressive voice, "what a liar you are!" The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in the man's face. The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger half knowingly, half menacingly, the piece of honesty thought better of it, and sat down again. Putting the glass down, too. "And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the temple with that invented story," said the stranger in an exasperatingly comfortable sort of confidence, "you might have had your strong suspicions of a friend of your own, you know? I think you had, you know, me, my suspicions, of what friend? Tell me again whose knife was this?" demanded the man. "He was possessed by him and was a property of him as I have made mention on," said Ryderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the name. "Tell me again whose coat was this." That their oracle clothing was belonged to, and was wore by him as I have made mention on, was again the dull old Bailey evasion. "I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in his keeping out of the way. The cleverness would have been to have got back for one single instant to the light of the sun." "Things each count to a pretty pass," growled Mr. Ryderhood, rising to his feet, goaded to Standard Bay, "when Bulliers, as a wearing dead man's clothes, and Bulliers, as he's armed with dead men's knives, is to come to the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats of their brows, and is to make this ear sort of charges with no rhyme and no reason, neither the one nor yet the other. Why should I have had my suspicions of him?" "Because you knew him," replied the man, "because you had been one with him, and knew his real character and affair outside, because on the night which you had afterwards reason to believe to be the very night of the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his having left his ship in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was there no stranger with him?" "I'll take my world without end ever lasting off with David that you want with him," answered Ryderhood, "you talk big, you do, but things look pretty black against yourself to my thinking. You charge again me that George Redfoot got lost sight of, and was no more thought of. What's that for a sailor? Why, there's fifty such, out of sight, and out of mind, ten times as long as him, through entering in different names, reshipping when the outward voyage is made, and whatnot, a turning up to light every day about here, and no matter made of it. Ask my daughter. "You could go on Paul Parroton enough with her when I won't come in. Paul Parroton a little with her on this point. You and your suspicions, of my suspicions of him. What are my suspicions of you? You tell me, George Redfoot got killed. I ask you, done it. And how you know it? You carry his knife, and he wear his coat. I ask you, how you can buy him, and over that there bottle." Here, Mr. Ryderhood appeared to labor under a virtuous delusion that was his own property. "And you?" he added, turning to his daughter as he filled the footless glass. "If you are wasting good sherry wine on you, I chuck this at you, for Paul Parroton with this man. It's along a Paul Parroton, as such light as him, gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by argument, and being naturally on this man, and sweating away at the brow as on this man ought." Here he filled the footless goblet again, and stood chewing one half of its contents, and looking down into the other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass. While pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apostrophized, rearranged it, much in the style of the tale of a horse, and proceeding to market to be sold. "Well, have you finished?" asked the strange man. "No," said Ryderhood. "I ain't. For from it. Now, then, I want to know how George Redfoot can buy his death, and how you can buy his kit." "If you ever do know, you won't know now." "An xt, I want to know," proceeded Ryderhood, "whether you means to charge that what you may call it, murder." "Harm and murder, father," suggested pleasant. "No, Paul Parroton!" he was separated in return. "Keep your mouth shut." "I want to know, you sir, whether you charge that their crime on George Redfoot?" "If you ever do know, you won't know now." "Perhaps you've done it yourself," said Ryderhood, with a threatening action. "I alone know," returned the man sternly shaking his head. "The mysteries of that crime, I alone know that your trumped-up story cannot possibly be true. I alone know that it must be altogether false, and that you must know it to be altogether false. I come here tonight to tell you so much of what I know, and no more." Mr. Ryderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated for some moments, and then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents down his throat in three tips. "Shut the shop-door," he then sent to his daughter, putting the glass suddenly down, "and turn the key, and stand by it." "If you know all this, you sir," getting as he spoke between the visitor and the door, "why, and you've gone alloy a lie, would?" "That also is alone known to myself," was the cool answer. "Don't you know that if you didn't do the deed, what you say you could tell is worth from five to ten thousand pounds?" asked Ryderhood. "I know it very well, and when I claim the money, you shall share it." The honest man paused, and too a little nearer to the visitor, and a little further from the door. "I know it," repeated the man quietly, "as well as I know that you and George Radfoot were one together in more than one dark business, and as well as I know that you, Roger Raderhood, conspired against an innocent man for blood money, and as well as I know that, I can, and that I swear I will, give you up on both scores and be the proof against you in my own person, if you defy me." "Father," cried Peasant from the door, "don't defy him, give way to him, don't get into more trouble, Father. Will you leave off a pole parrot in, I ask you?" cried Mr. Raderhood, half beside himself between the two, then propitiatingly and trawlingly, "You, sir. You, aunt, said, what you want of me. Is it fair, is it worthy of yourself, to talk to my defying you or four of you say what you want of me?" "I don't want much," said the man. "This accusation of yours must not be left half made and half unmade. What was done for the blood money must be thoroughly undone." "Well, that shipmate." "Don't call me shipmate," said the man. "Captain, then," urged Mr. Raderhood, "there, you are objecting, Captain. It's honorable, Tartl, and you fully look it, Captain. Ain't the man dead? Now, ask you fair, I ain't gaffa dead." "Well," returned the other with impatience, "yes, he is dead. What, then?" "Can words? A dead man, Captain. I only ask you fair." "They can hurt the memory of a dead man, and they can hurt his living children. How many children had this man?" "Meaning gaffa, Captain." "Of whom else are we speaking?" returned the other with a movement of his foot, as if rogue Raderhood were beginning to sneak before him and the body, as well as the spirit, and he spurned him off. "I have heard of a daughter and a son. I ask for information. I ask your daughter. I prefer to speak to her. What children did hex him leave?" Pleasant, looking to her father for permission to reply, that honest man exclaimed with great bitterness. "Why, the devil, don't you answer the captain. You can pull parrot enough when you ain't wanted to pull parrot. You pull worse jade." Thus encouraged, Pleasant explained, that there were only Lizzy, the daughter in question, and the youth. "Both very respectable," she added. "It is dreadful that any stigma should attach to them," said the visitor, whom the consideration rendered so uneasy that he rose and paced to and fro muttering dreadful, unforeseen. How could it be foreseen? And he stopped and asked aloud. "Where do they live?" Pleasant further explained that only the daughter had resided with the father at the time of his accidental death, and that she had immediately afterwards quitted the neighbourhood. "I know that," said the man, for I have been to the place they dwelt in at the time of the inquest. "Could you quietly find out for me where she lives now?" Pleasant had no doubt she could do that. Within what time did she think? Within a day. The visitor said that was well, and he would return for the information for lying on its being obtained. To this dialogue, Ryderhood had attended in silence, and he now obsequiously bespeak the captain. "Mentioning them unfortunate words of mine respecting Gather. It is contrary to be brought in mind that Gather always were a precious rascal, and that his line were a thieving line. Lightways, when I went to them two Gavenners, lawyer, Lightwood, and the Tather Gavenner, with my information, I may have been little over eager for the cause of justice, or, to put it another way, a little overstimulated by them feelings, which rouses a man up when a pot of money is going about, to get his hand and do that pot of money for his family's sake. Besides which, I think the wine of them two Gavenners was, I will not say a hulkest wine, but her from a wine as was healthy for the mind. And there's another thing to be remembered, Captain. Did I stick to them words when Gather was no more, and did I say bold to them two Gavenners? Gavenners both, what I informed, I still informed, what was took down, I owe too. No, I'll say it's frankly an open, no shuffling, my due, Captain. I may have been mistook. I'll be the thinking of it. It might have been took down correct on this and that, and I'll elsewhere thicken thin, I'll either forfeit your good opinions and do it. And so far as I know, concluded Mr. Riderhood, by way of proof and evidence to character, I have, actually, forfeited the good opinions of several persons, even your own, Captain, if I understand your words, but I'd sooner do it than be forceful. There, effect conspiracy, corny conspirator. "You shall sign," said the visitor, taking very little heed of this oration, "a statement that it was all utterly false, and the poor girl shall have it. I'll bring it with me for your signature when I come again." "When, Mart, you be expected, Captain?" inquired Riderhood again, dubiously getting between him and the door. "Quite soon enough for you. I shall not disappoint you. Don't be afraid." "Mart, you be inclined to leave any name, Captain?" "No, not at all. I have no such intention." "Shall is summit of a hard word, Captain," urged Riderhood, still feebly dodging between him and the doors, he advanced. "When you say a man shall sign this and that and other, Captain, you order him about no grand sort of way. Don't it seem so, yourself?" The man stood still, and angrily fixed him with his eyes. "Father, father!" Entreated pleasant from the door, with her disengaged hand nervously trembling at her lips, "Don't, don't get into trouble any more." "Ew, me out, Captain. Ew out. All I was wishing, a mention, Captain, for you took your departure," said the sneaking Mr. Riderhood, falling out of his path, "was, your handsome words relating to the reward." "When I claim it," said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave some such words as you dog, very distinctly understood, "you shall share it." Looking steadfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice, this time with a grim sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of evil, "what a liar you are." And, nodding his head twice or thrice over the compliment, passed out of the shop. But, to pleasant, he said goodnight kindly. The honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow remained in a state akin to stupefaction, until the footless glass and the unfinished bottle conveyed themselves into his mind. From his mind, he conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of the wine into his stomach. When that was done, he awoke to a clear perception that Paul parroting was solely chargeable with what had passed. Therefore, not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw a pair of sea boots at pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing, using her hair for a pocket hankerchief. End of Book II Chapter 12 Chapter 13 A Solo and a Duet The wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the shop door into the darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him in again. Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown out, signs were rocking in their frames, the water of the kennels, wind dispersed, flew about and drops like rain. In different to the weather, and even referring it to better weather for its clearance of the streets, the man looked about him for the scrutinising glance. "Thus much I know," he murmured, "I never been here since that night, and never was here before that night. But thus much I recognise. I wonder which way did we take when we came out of that shop? Return to the right, as I have turned, but I can recall no more. Did we go by this alley, or down that little lane?" He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came straying back to the same spot. "I remember there were poles pushed out of upper windows on which clothes were drying, and I remember a low public house, and the sound flowing down a narrow passage belonging to it, of the scraping of a fiddle, and the shuffling of feet. Over here are all these things in the lane, and here are all these things in the alley. And I have nothing else in my mind but a wall, a dark doorway, a flight of stairs, and a room." He tried a new direction. It made nothing of it. Walls, dark doorways, flights of stairs and rooms were too abundant, and, like most people so puzzled, he again and again described a circle, and found himself at the point from which he had begun. "This is like what I have read and narratives of escape from prison," said he, where the little track of the fugitives in the night always seems to take the shape of the great round world on which they wander, as if it were a secret law. Here he ceased to be the oakum-headed, oakum-whiskered man, and whom his pleasant ride-a-hood had looked, and allowing for his being still wrapped in a nautical overcoat, became as like that same lost-wanted Mr. Julius Hanford, as never man was like another in this world. In the breast of the coat he stowed the bristling hair and whisker. In a moment, as the favouring wind went with him down a solitary place that had swept clear of passengers, yet in that same moment he was the secretary also, Mr. Boffin's secretary. For John Rokesmith, too, was as like that same lost-wanted Mr. Julius Hanford as never man was like another in this world. "I have no clue to the scene of my death," said he, "not that it matters now. But having risked discovery by venturing here at all, I should have been glad to track some part of the way." With which singular words he abandoned his search, came up out of Limehouse Hall, and took the way past Limehouse Church. At the great iron gate of the churchyard he stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower, spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round at the white tombstones, like enough to their dead and their winding sheets, and he counted the nine tolls at the clockbell. "It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals," said he, to be looking into a churchyard on a wild, windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit at once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier going unrecognized among mankind than I feel. But this is the fanciful side of the situation. It has a real side, so difficult that, though I think of it every day, I never thoroughly think it out. Now, let me determine to think it out as I walk home. I know I evade it, as many men, perhaps most men, do evade thinking their way through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin myself to mine. Don't evade it, John Harmon. Don't evade it. Think it out. When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none but most miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance that found me abroad, I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory, mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening gratitude to the two dear, noble, honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or that of my heartbroken sister. I came back, timid, divided in my mind, afraid of myself and everybody here, knowing of nothing but wretchedness that my father's wealth had ever brought about. Now stop, and so far think it out, John Harmon. Is that so? That is exactly so. On board, serving his third mate was George Redfoot. I knew nothing of him. His name first became known to me about a week before we sailed, through my being accosted by one of the ship-agents' plaques as Mr. Redfoot. It was this one day when I had gone aboard to look to my preparations, and the clerk, coming behind me as I stood on deck, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Mr. Redfoot, look here," referring to some papers that he had in his hand, and my name first became known to Redfoot through another clerk within a day or two, and while the ship was yet in port, coming up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and beginning, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Harmon." I believe we were alike in Balkan stature, but not otherwise, that we were not strikingly alike even in those respects when we were together and could be compared. However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy introduction between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me to a cool cabin on deck alongside his own, and his first school had been at Brussels as mine had been, and he had learned French as I had learned it, and he had a little history of himself to relate. God only knows how much of it was true, and how much of it false, that had its likeness to mine. I had been a seaman, too, so we got to be confidential together, and the more easily yet, because he and everyone on board had known, by general rumour, what I was making the voyage to England for. By such degrees and means he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mine, and of its setting at that time in the direction of desiring to see and form some judgment of my allotted wife before she could possibly know me for myself, also to try Mrs. Boffin and give her a glad surprise. So the plot was made out of our "getting common sailors' dresses," as he was able to guide me about London, and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer's neighbourhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing whatever chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it. If nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would merely be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all these facts right? Yes, they are all accurately right. His advantage in all this was that for a time I was to be lost. It might be for a day or for two days, but I must be lost sight of on landing, or there would be recognition, anticipation, and failure. Therefore, I disembarked with my release in my hand as a poterson, the steward, and Mr. Jacob Kibble, my fellow passenger, afterward remembered, and waited for him in the dark by that very lime-house church, which is now behind me. As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone from the river, but how we too went from it to ride a hood shop. I don't know. Anymore than I know what turns we took and doubles we made after we left it, the way was purposely confused, no doubt. But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with my speculations. Whether he took me by a straight way or a crooked way, what is that to the purpose now? Steady John Harmon. When we stopped at ride a hoods, and he asked that scoundrel a question or two, purporting to refer only to the lodging-houses in which there was a commendation for us, had I the least suspicion of him? None. Certainly none until afterwards when I held the clue. I think he must have got from ride a hood in a paper, the drug, or whatever it was, that afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure. All I felt safe in charging on him tonight was old companionship and villainy between them. Their undisguised intimacy and the character I now know ride a hood to bear made that not at all adventurous. But I am not clear about the drug, thinking out the circumstances in which I found my suspicion there only two. One. I remember his changing a small folded paper from one pocket to another after we came out which he had not touched before. Two. I now know ride a hood to have been previously taken up for being concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman to whom some such poison had been given. It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that shop before we came to the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and the room. The night was particularly dark, and it rained hard. As I think the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing on the stone pavement of the passage, which was not under cover. The room overlooked the river or a dock or a creek, and the tide was out. Being possessed of the time down to that point, I know by the hour that it must have been about low water. But while the coffee was getting ready, I drew back the curtain, a dark brown curtain, and, looking out, knew by the kind of reflection below of the few neighbouring lights that they were reflected in tidal mud. He had carried under his arm a canvas bag containing a suit of his clothes. I had no change of outer clothes with me as I was to buy slops. "You're very wet, Mr. Harmon," I can hear him saying. "And I am quite dry under this good waterproof coat. Put on these clothes of mine. You may find on trying them that they will answer your purpose tomorrow as well as the slops you mean to buy or better. While you change, I'll hurry the hot coffee. When he came back, I had his clothes on, and there was a black man with him wearing a linen jacket like a steward who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and never looked at me. I am so far literal and exact, literal and exact I am certain. Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions. They are so strong that I rely upon them, but there are spaces between them that I know nothing about, and they are not pervaded by any idea of time. I had drank some coffee. When, to my sense of sight, he began to swell immensely, and something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near the door. He got from me, through my not knowing where to strike, in the whirling round of the room, and the flashing of flames of fire between us. I dropped down, lying helpless on the ground. I was turned over by a foot. I was dragged by the neck into a corner. I heard men speak together. I was turned over by other feet. I saw a figure like myself, lying dressed in my clothes on a bed. What might have been, for anything I knew, a silence of days, weeks, months, years, was broken by a violent wrestling of men all over the room. The figure like myself was assailed, and my release was in its hand. I was trodden upon and fallen over. I heard a noise of blows, and thought it was a woodcutter cutting down a tree. I could not have said that my name was John Harmon. I could not have thought it. I didn't know it. But when I heard the blows, I thought of the woodcutter and his axe, and had some dead idea that I was lying in a forest. This is still correct. Still correct, with the exception that I cannot possibly express it to myself without using the word 'I'. But it was not 'I'. There was no such thing as 'I' within my knowledge. It was only after a downward slide, through something like a tube, and then a great noise, and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the consciousness came upon me. This is John Harmon drowning. John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on heaven and save yourself. I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy, horrid, unintelligible something vanished, and it was 'I', who was struggling there, alone in the water. I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drizziness and driving fast with the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw the lights racing past me on the two banks of the river, as if they were eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide was running down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When, guiding myself safely with heaven's assistance before the fierce set of the water, I had last caught at a boat moored, one of a tear of boats at a causeway. I was sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the other side. Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but I don't know how long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in drunk when I crept to the public house it belonged to, for I had no notion where I was, and could not articulate, through the poison that had made me insensible having affected my speech, and I suppose the night to be the previous night, as it was still dark and raining, but I had lost twenty-four hours. I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights that I lay recovering in that public house. Let me see. Yes, I am sure it was while I lay in that bed there, at the thought entered my head, of turning the danger I had passed through to the account of being for sometimes supposed to have disappeared mysteriously, and are proving bala. The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating the fates that seemed to have fallen on my father's riches, the fate that they should lead to nothing but evil, was strong upon the moral timidity that dates from my childhood with my poor sister. As to this hour, I cannot understand that side of the river where I recovered the shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was ensnared. I shall never understand it now. Even at this moment, while I leave the river behind me going home, I cannot conceive that it rolls between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But this is not thinking it out, this is making a leap to the present time. I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof belt round my body. Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand, but it was enough. Without it, I must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never have gone to that exchequer coffee house, or taken Mrs. Wolff as lodgings. Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the corpse of Radford at the police station. The inexpressible mental horror that I laboured under, as one of the consequences of the poison, makes the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it cannot have been longer. That suffering has gradually weakened and weakened since, and has only come upon me by starts, and I hope I am free from it now. But even now, I have sometimes to think, constrain myself, and stop before speaking, or I could not say the words I want to say. Again, I ramble away from thinking it out to the end, it is not so far to the end that I need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight. I examined the newspapers every day for tidings that I was missing, but saw none. Going out that night to walk, for I kept retired while it was light. I found a crowd assembled round a placard posted at Whitehall. It described myself, John Harmon, as found dead and mutilated in the river, under circumstances of strong suspicion. Described my dress, described the papers in my pockets, and stated where I was lying for recognition. In a wild and cautious way I hurried there, and there, with the horror of the death I had escaped before my eyes and its most appalling shape, added to the inconceivable horror tormenting me at that time, when the poisonous stuff was strongest on me, I perceived that Radford had been murdered by some unknown hands for the money for which he would have murdered me, and that probably we had both been shot into the river from the same dark place into the same dark tide when the stream ran deep and strong. That night I almost gave up my mystery, though I suspected no one, could offer no information, knew absolutely nothing, say that the murdered man was not I, but Radford. Next day, while I hesitated, and next day, while I hesitated, it seemed as if the whole country were determined to have me dead. The inquest declared me dead. The government proclaimed me dead. I could not listen at my fireside for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead. So John Harmon died, and Julius Hanford disappeared, and John Rokesmith was born. John Rokesmith's intent tonight has been to repair a wrong that he could never have imagined possible coming to his ears through the lightwood talk related to him, and which he is bound by every consideration to remedy. In that intent, John Rokesmith will persevere as his duty is. Now, is it all thought out? All to this time? Nothing omitted? No. Nothing. But beyond this time, to think it out through the future is a harder, though a much shorter task than to think it out through the past. John Harmon is dead. Should John Harmon come to life? If yes, why? If no, why? Take yes first. To enlighten human justice concerning the offence of one far beyond it, who may have a living mother, to enlighten it with the lights of a stone passage, a flight of stairs, a brown window curtain, and a black man, to come into possession of my father's money, and with it sordidly, to buy a beautiful creature whom I love. I cannot help it. Reason has nothing to do with it. I love her against reason. But who would have assumed have me, if my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner? What a use for the money, and how worthy of its old misuses. Now, take no. The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life, because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass into possession of the property, because he sees them happy with it, making a good use of it, effacing the old rust and tarnish on the money, because they have virtually adopted Bella, and will provide for her, because there is affection enough in her nature, warmth enough in her heart, to develop into something enduringly good, under favourable conditions, because her faults have been intensified by her place in my father's will, and she is already growing better, because her marriage with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a shocking mockery of which both she and I must always be conscious, and which would degrade her in her mind, and me in mine, and each of us and the others, because if John Harmon comes to life and does not marry her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it now. What would I have? Dead, I have found the true friends in my lifetime, still as true as tender and as faithful as when I was alive, and making my memory and incentive to good actions done in my name. Dead, I have found them when they might have slighted my name, and passed greedily over my grave to ease and wealth, lingering by the way, like single-hearted children, to recall their love for me when I was a poor, frightened child. Dead, I have heard from the woman who would have been my wife if I had lived. The revolting truth that I should have purchased her, caring nothing for me, as a sultan buys a slave. What would I have? If the dead could know, or do know how the living use them, who among the hosts of dead has found a more disinterested fidelity on earth than I, is not that enough for me. If I had come back, these noble creatures would have welcomed me, weft over me, given up everything to me with joy. I do not come back, and they have passed unspoiled into my place. Let them rest in it, and that Bella rest in hers. What course, for me, then, this, to live the same quiet, secretary life, carefully avoiding chances of recognition, until they shall have become more accustomed to their altered state, and until the great swarm of swindlers, and of many names, shall have found newer prey. By that time, the method I am establishing through all the affairs, and with which I will every day take new pains to make them both familiar, will be, I may hope, a machine in such working order as that they can keep it going. I know I need but ask of their generosity to have. When the right time comes, I will ask no more, then will replace me in my former part of life, and John Rooksmith shall tread it as contentedly as he may, but John Harmon shall come back no more. That I may never, in the days to come afar off, have any weak misgiving that Bella might, in any contingency, have taken me for my own sake, if I had plainly asked her. I will, plainly ask her, proving beyond all question what I already know too well. And now it is all thought out, from the beginning to the end, and my mind is easier. So deeply engaged had the living dead man been, in thus communing with himself, that he had regarded neither the wind nor the way, and had resisted the former instinctively as he had pursued the latter. But being now come into the city where there was a coach stand, he stood a resolute, whether to go to his lodgings, or to go first to Mr. Bougham's house. He decided to go round by the house, arguing, as he carried his overcoat upon his arm, that it was less likely to attract notice, if left there, than have taken to Holloway. Both Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavina being ravenously curious, touching every article of which the lodger stood possessed. Arriving at the house, he found that Mr. and Mrs. Bougham were out, but that Miss Wilfer was in the drawing-room. Miss Wilfer had remained at home, in consequence of not feeling very well, and had inquired in the evening if Mr. Rokesmith were in his room. "Make my compliments to Miss Wilfer and say I am here now." Miss Wilfer's compliments came down in return, and, if it were not too much trouble, would Mr. Rokesmith be so kind as to come up before he went? It was not too much trouble, and Mr. Rokesmith came up. "Oh, she looked very pretty. She looked very, very pretty. If the father of the late John Harmon had but left his money unconditionally to his son, and if his son had but lighted on this lovable girl for himself, and had the happiness to make her loving as well as lovable." "Dear me, are you not well, Mr. Rokesmith?" "Yes, quite well. I was sorry to hear when I came in that you were not." "I mean nothing. I had headache, gone now, and was not quite fit for a hot theatre, so I stayed at home. I asked you if you were not well, because you look so white." "Do I?" "I have had a busy evening." She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining jewel of a table, and her book and her work beside her. "Ah, what a different life the late John Harmon's if it had been his happy privilege to take his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm about that waist, and say, 'I hope the time has been long without me. What a home goddess you look, my darling.' But the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John Harmon, remained standing at a distance, a little distance in respect of space, with a great distance in respect of separation." "Mr. Rokesmith," said Bella, taking up her work and inspecting it all round the corners, "I wanted to say something to you, when I could have the opportunity, as an explanation why I was so rude to you the other day. You have no right to think ill of me, sir." The sharp little way in which he darted look at him, half sensitively injured and half-petishly, would have been very much admired by the late John Harmon. "You don't know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer." "Truly, you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr. Rokesmith, when you believe that in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home." "Do I believe so?" "You did, sir, at any rate," returned Bella. "I took the liberty of reminding you of a little omission into which you had fallen, insensibly and naturally fallen. It was no more than that." "And I beg leave to ask you, Mr. Rokesmith," said Bella, "why you took that liberty. I hope there is no offence in the phrase. It is your own, remember?" "Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss Wilfer, because I wish to see you all is at your best. Because I—shall I go on?" "No, sir," returned Bella, with a burning face. "You have said more than enough. I beg that you will not go on. If you have any generosity, any honour, you will say no more." The late John Harmon, looking at the proud face with the downcast eyes, and at the quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair over the beautiful neck, would probably have remained silent. "I wish to speak to you, sir," said Bella, "once for all, and I don't know how to do it. I have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak to you, and determining to speak to you, and feeling that I must. I beg for a moment's time." He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, sometimes making a slight movement as if she would turn and speak. At length, she did so. "You know how I am situated here, sir, and you know how I am situated at home. I must speak to you for myself, since there is no one about me whom I could ask to do so. It is not generous in you. It is not honourable in you to conduct yourself towards me as you do." "Is it ungenerous or dishonourable to be devoted to you, fascinated by you?" "Pre-postress!" said Bella, the late John Harmon might have thought it rather a contemptuous and lofty word of repudiation. "I now feel obliged to go on," pursued the secretary. Though it were only in self-explanation and self-defense, I hope Miss Wilfer that it is not unpardonable, even in me, to make an honest declaration of an honest devotion to you. "An honest declaration," repeated Bella, with emphasis, "is it otherwise?" "I must request, sir," said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely resentment, "that I may not be questioned. You must excuse me if I decline to be cross-examined." "Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing but what your own emphasis suggests. However, I wave even that question. But what I have declared, I take my standby. I cannot recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do not recall it." "I reject it, sir," said Bella. "I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply. Forgive my offence, for it carries its punishment with it." "What punishment?" asked Bella. "Is my present endurance none?" "But, excuse me, I did not mean to cross-examine you again." "You take advantage of a hasty word of mine," said Bella, with a little sting of self-reproach. "To make me seem—I don't know what. I spoke without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, I'm sorry. But you've repeated after consideration, and that seems to me to be at least no better. For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr. Rokesmith, that there is an end of this between us—now and forever." "Now and forever," he repeated. "Yes. I appeal to you, sir," proceeded Bella, with increasing spirit, "not to pursue me. I appeal to you not to take advantage of your position in this house, to make my position in distressing and disagreeable. I appeal to you to discontinue a habit of making your misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs. Boughton as to me." "Have I done so?" "I should think you have," replied Bella. "In any case, it is not your fault of you if not, Mr. Rokesmith." "I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to have justified it. I think I have not. For the future there is no apprehension. It is all over." "I am much relieved to hear it," said Bella. "I have far other views in life, and why should you waste your own?" "My mind," said the secretary, "my life." His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with which he said it. It was gone as he glanced back. "Pardon me, Mr. Wilfer," he proceeded when their eyes met. "You have used some hard words for which I do not doubt you have a justification in your mind that I do not understand—ungenerous and dishonorable—in what?" "I would rather not be asked," said Bella, hortily looking down. "I would rather not ask. But the question is imposed upon me—kindly explain. Or if not kindly, justly." "Oh, sir," said Bella, raising her eyes to his after a little struggle to forbear. "Is it generous and honorable? Do you use the power here, which your favour with Mr. and Mrs. Buffon and your ability in your place give you against me?" "Against you?" "Is it generous and honorable to form a plan for gradually bringing their influence to bear upon a suit which I have shown you that I do not like, and which I tell you that I utterly reject?" The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he would have been cut to the heart by such a suspicion as this. "Would it be generous and honorable to step into your place if you did so, if I don't know that you did, and I hope you did not, anticipating or knowing beforehand that I should come here and designing to take me at this disadvantage?" "This mean and cruel disadvantage," said the Secretary. "Yes," assented Bella. The Secretary kept silence for a little while, then merely said, "You are wholly mistaken, Miss Wilfer. Wonderfully mistaken. I cannot say, however, that it is your fault. If I deserve better things of you, you do not know it." "At least, sir," we talked at Bella with her old indignation rising, "you know the history of my being here at all. I have heard Mr. Buffon say that you are master at every line and word of that will, as you are master of all his affairs, and was it not enough that I should have been willed away like a horse or a dog or a bird, but must you too begin to dispose of me in your mind, and speculate in me as soon as I had ceased to be the talk of the laugh of the town. Am I forever to have made the property of strangers?" "Believe me," returned the Secretary, "you are wonderfully mistaken." "I should be glad to know it," answered Bella. "I doubt if you ever will." "Good night. Of course I shall be careful to conceal any traces of this interview from Mr. Mrs. Buffon, as long as I remain here. Trust me, what you have complained of is at an end forever." "I am glad I have spoken then, Mr. Oaksmith. It has been painful and difficult, but it is done. If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have been a little spoiled. But really, I am not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think me." He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her willful, inconsistent way. Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman and said, "I didn't go with a lovely woman, was such a dragon!" Then she got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, "You have been positively swelling your features, you little fool." Then she took an impatient walk to the other end of the room and back, and said, "I wish Pa was here to have a talk about an average's marriage, but he is better away, poor dear, for I knew I should pull his hair if he was here." And then she threw her work away and threw her book after it, and sat down and hummed a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and quarreled with it. And John Rokesmith, what did he? He went down to his room and buried John Harmon many additional fathoms deep. He took his hat and walked out, and as he went to Holloway or anywhere else, not at all minding where, heaped mounds upon mounds of earth over John Harmon's grave. His walking did not bring him home until the dawn of day. And so busy had he been all night, piling and piling weights upon weights of earth above John Harmon's grave, that by that time, John Harmon lay buried under a whole alpine range, and still the Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with the dirge, cover him, crush him, keep him down. End of Book 2 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Strong of Purpose The Sexton task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long was not conducive to sound sleep, but Rokesmith had some broken morning rest and rose strengthened in his purpose. It was all over now. No ghost should trouble Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's peace, invisible and voiceless, the ghost should look on for a little while longer at the state of existence out of which it had departed, and then should forever cease to haunt the scenes in which it had no place. He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in which he found himself, as many a man lapses into many a condition without perceiving the accumulative power of its separate circumstances. When, in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood, and the action for evil, never yet for good within his knowledge then, of his father and his father's wealth on all within their influence, he conceived the idea of his first deception. It was meant to be harmless. It was to last with a few hours or days. It was to involve in it only the girl so capriciously forced upon him, and upon whom he was so capriciously forced. And it was honestly meant well towards her. For if he had found her unhappy in the prospect of that marriage, through her heart inclining to another man, or for any other cause, he would seriously have said, "This is another of the old perverted uses of the misery-making money. I will let it go to my and my sisters, only protectors and friends." When the snare into which he fell so outstripped his first intention, as that he found himself, placarded by the police authorities upon the London walls for dead, he confusedly accepted the aid that fell upon him, without considering how firmly it must seem to fix the coffins in their accession to the fortune. When he saw them, and knew them, and even from his vantage ground of inspection could find no flaw in them, he asked himself, "And shall I come to life to dispossess such people as these?" There was no good to set against the putting of them to that hard proof. He had heard from Bella's own lips when he stood tapping at the door on that night of his taking the lodgings, that the marriage would have been on her part thoroughly mercenary. He had since tried her in his own unknown person and supposed station, and she not only rejected his advances, but resented them. Was it for him to have the shame of buying her, or the meanness of punishing her? Yet, by coming to life and accepting the condition of the inheritance, he must do the former, and by coming to life and rejecting it, he must do the latter. Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed was the implication of an innocent man in his supposed murder. He would obtain complete retraction from the accuser, and set the wrong right, but clearly the wrong could never have been done if he had never planned a deception. Then, whatever inconvenience or distress of mind a deception cost him, it was manful repentantly to accept as among its consequences, and make no complaint. Thus John Rokesmith in the morning, and it buried John Harmon still many fathoms deeper than he had been buried in the night. Going out earlier than he was accustomed to do, he encountered the cherub at the door. The cherub's way was for a certain space his way, and they walked together. It was impossible not to notice the change in the cherub's appearance. The cherub felt very conscious of it, and modestly remarked, "A present from my daughter Bella, Mr. Rokesmith." The words gave the secretary a stroke of pleasure, for he remembered the fifty pounds, and he still loved the girl. No doubt it was very weak, it always is, very weak, some authorities hold, but he loved the girl. "I don't know whether you happen to have read many books of African travel, Mr. Rokesmith," said R.W. "I have read several." "Well, you know, there's usually a king George or a king boy or a king Sambo or a king Bill or Bull or Rum or Junk, or whatever name the sailors may have happened to give him." "Well," asked Rokesmith, "anywhere, anywhere in Africa I mean, pretty well everywhere I may say, for black kings are cheap, and I think," said R.W. with an apologetic air, "nosty." "I am much of your opinion, Mr. Wilfer," you were going to say. "I was going to say the king is generally dressed in a London hat only, or a Manchester pair of braces, or one epilate, or an uniform coat with his legs and the sleeves, or something of that kind." "Just so," said the secretary, "in confidence I assure you, Mr. Rokesmith," observed the cheerful cherub, "that one more of my family were at home and to be provided for, I used to remind myself immensely of that king. You have no idea as a single man of the difficulty I have had in wearing more than one good article at a time." "I can easily believe it, Mr. Wilfer." "I only mention it," said R.W., and the warmth of his heart, "as a proof of the amiable, delicate and considerate affection of my daughter Bella. If she had been a little spoiled, I couldn't have thought so very much of it under the circumstances, but no, not a bit, and she is so very pretty. I hope you agree with me in finding her very pretty, Mr. Rokesmith. Certainly I do. Everyone must." "I hope so," said the cherub. "Indeed, I have no doubt of it. This is a great advancement for her in life, Mr. Rokesmith, a great opening of her prospects. Miss Wilfer could have no better friends, and Mr. Mrs. Boffin." "Impossible," said the gratified cherub. "Really, I begin to think things are very well as they are. If Mr. John Harmon had lived, he is better than," said the secretary. "No, I won't go too far as to say that," said the cherub, a little remonestant against the very decisive and unpitting tone. "But he mightn't have suited Bella, or Bella mightn't have suited him, or fifty things, whereas now I hope she can choose for herself." "As she, as you place the confidence in me of speaking on the subject, you will excuse my asking, how she, perhaps, chosen," faltered the secretary. "Oh, dear, no," returned R.W. "Young ladies, sometimes," Rokesmith hinted, "choose without mentioning their choice to their fathers. Not in this case, Mr. Rokesmith. Between my daughter, Bella, and me, there is a regular deacon covenant of confidence. It was ratified only the other day. The ratification dates from these," said the cherub, giving a little pull at the lapels of his coat and the pockets of his trousers. "Oh, no, she is not chosen. To be sure, young George Sampson in the days when Mr. John Harmon, who I wish had never been born," said the secretary, with a gloomy brow. R.W. looked at him with surprise, a thinking he had contracted an unaccountable spite against the poor deceased and continued. "In the days when Mr. John Harmon was being sought out, young George Sampson certainly was hovering about Bella, and Bella let him hover. But it never was seriously thought of, and it's still less than ever to be thought of now. For Bella is ambitious, Mr. Rokesmith, and I think I may predict will marry fortune. This time you see she will have the person and the property before her together, and will be able to make her choice with her eyes open. This is my road. I'm very sorry to part company so soon. Good morning, sir." The secretary pursued his way, not very much elevated in spirits by this conversation, and arriving at the boffin mansion found Betty Hidden waiting for him. "I should thank you kindly, sir," said Betty, "if I might make so bold as ever word or two, will you?" "She should have as many words as she liked," he told her, and took her into his room and made her sit down. "Tis concerning sloppy, sir," said Betty, "and that's how I come here by myself, not wishing him to know what I'm going to say to you. I got the start of a mule and walked up." "You have a wonderful energy," returned Rokesmith. "You are as young as I am," Betty Hidden gravely shook her head. "I am strong for my time of life, sir, but not young, thank the Lord. Are you thankful for not being young?" "Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see? But never mind me, 'tis concerning sloppy." "And what about him, Betty?" "Tis just this, sir. It can't be reasoned out of his head by any powers of mine, but what that? It can do right by your kind lady and gentleman, and do his work for me, both together. Now he can't. To give himself up, to be in putting the way of ironing a good living and getting on, he must give me up. Well, he won't. "I respect him for it," said Rokesmith. "Do ye, sir. I don't know but what I do myself. Still, that don't make it right to let him have his way. So, as he won't give me up, I'm going to give him up." "How, Betty?" "I'm going to run away from him." With an astonished look at the indomitable old face on the bright eyes, the secretary repeated, "Run away from him." "Yes, sir," said Betty, with one nod, and in the nod, and in the firm set of her mouth, there was a vigour of purpose not to be doubted. "Come, come," said the secretary, "we must talk about this. Let us take our time over it, and try to get at the true sense of the case and the true course by degrees." "Now, look here, my dear," returned old Betty, "asking your excuse of being so familiar, but being of a time of life almost to be your grandmother, twice over. Now, look here. 'Tis a poor living, and odd, as is to be got out of this work that I'm doing now. And but for sloppy, I don't know as I should have held to it this long. But it did, just keep us on the two together. Now that I'm alone, with even Johnny Gunn, I far sooner be upon my feet, and tiring of myself out, than I sit in folding and folding by the fire. And I'll tell you why. 'Tis a deadness stealers over me at times, at the kind of life favours, and I don't like. Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms. Now, he's mother. Now, he's mother's mother. Now, I seem to be a child myself, a lion once again, in the arms of my own mother. And I get numbed, thought and sense, till I start out of my seat, a fear that I'm a growing like the poor old people, that they brick up in the unions, as you may sometimes see, when they let him out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun, crawling, quite scared about the streets. I was a nimble girl, and I've always been active body, as I told your lady first time ever I see her good face. I can still walk twenty mile if I'm put to it. I'd far better be a walking, than I get in numbed and dreary. I'm a good fair knitter, and can make many little things to sell. The loan from your lady and gentlemen of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with, would be a fortune for me, trudging round a country, and tiring of myself out, I shall keep the deadness off, and get my own bread, far me out in labour, and what walking I want. "And this is your plan," said the secretary, for running away. "Show me a better, my dreary, show me a better. Why, I know very well," said old Betty Higdon, "and you know very well that your lady and gentlemen would set me up like the Queen for the rest of my life, if so be that we could make it right on Congress to have it so. But we can't make it right among us to have it so. I've never took charity yet, nor yet as anyone belong in me. And it would be forsaking of myself indeed, and forsaking of my children dead and gone, and forsaking of their children dead and gone, to set up a contradiction now at last. It might come to be justifiable and unavoidable, at last," the secretary gently hinted with a slight stress on the word. "I hope it never will." "It ain't that I mean to give a fence, my bean, or any ways proud," said the old creature, simply, "but that I want to be of a peace, like, and helpful of myself right through to me death." "And to be sure," added the secretary, as a comfort for her, "sloppy will be eagerly looking forward to his opportunity of being to you, what you have been to him." "Trust him for that, sir," said Betty cheerfully, "though he had need to be something quick about it, for I'm getting to be an old one. But I'm a strong one too, and travel, and whether or never hurt me yet. Now, be so kind as to speak for me to your lady-gentleman, and tell him what I ask of their good friendliness to let me do, and why I ask it." The secretary felt that there was no gain saying what was urged by this brave old heroine. And he presently repaired to Mrs. Boughton and recommended her to let Betty Higdon have her way at all events for the time. "It would be far more satisfactory to your kind heart, I know," he said, "to provide for her. But it may be a duty to respect this independent spirit." Mrs. Boughton was not proof against the consideration set before her. She and her husband had worked too, and had brought their simple faith and honour clean out of dust heaps. If they owed a duty to Betty Higdon of assurity, that duty must be done. "But Betty," said Mrs. Boughton, when she accompanied John Rooks with back to his room, and shone upon her with the light of her radiant face, "Growned all else. I think I wouldn't run away." "Tood, can he see it a sloppy?" said Mrs. Higdon, shaking her head. "Tood, can he see it to me too? That tees as you please. When would you go?" "Now," was the bright and ready answer, "today, my dearie, tomorrow. Blessy, I'm used to it. I know many parts of the country well. When nothing else was to be done, I have worked in many a market gardener for now, and in many ahop garden too." "If I give my consent to your going, Betty, which Mr. Rooks me thinks I ought to do," Betty thanked him, with a grateful curtsy. "We must not lose sight of you, we must not let you pass out of our knowledge, we must know all about you." "Yes, my dearie, but not through letter writing, because letter writing, indeed, writing, have most sorts hadn't much come up for such as me when I was young. But I shall be too, and fro, no fear, am I missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face. Besides," said Betty, with logical good faith, "I shall have a debt to pay off, by littles, and naturally that will bring me back, if nothing else would." "Must it be done?" asked Mrs. Boffin, still reluctant of the secretary. "I think it must." After more discussion, it was agreed that it should be done, and Mrs. Boffin summoned Bella to note down the little purchases that were necessary to set Betty up in trade. "Don't ye be timorous for me, my dear," said the storms' old heart, observant of Bella's face. "When I take my seat with my work, clean and busy and fresh in a country-market place, I shall turn a sixpence as sure as ever a farmer's wife there." The secretary took that opportunity of touching on the practical question of Mr. sloppy's capabilities. "He would have made a wonderful cabinet-maker," said Mrs. Higdon, "if there had been the money to put him to it." She had seen him handle tools that he had borrowed to mend the mangle, or to knock a broken piece of furniture together in a surprising manner. As to constructing toys for the miners out of nothing, he had done that daily. And once, as many as a dozen people, had got together in the lane to see the neatness with which he fitted the broken pieces of a foreign monkey's musical instrument. "That's well," said the secretary. "It will not be hard to find a trade for him." John Harmon, being buried under mountains now, the secretary that very same day set himself to finish his affairs and have done with him. He drew up an ample declaration to be signed by rogue riderhood, knowing who could get his signature to it by making him another and much shorter evening call, and then considered to whom should be given the document. To hex him's son or daughter resolved speedily to the daughter. But it would be safer to avoid seeing the daughter because the son had seen Julius Hanford, and he could not be too careful. There might possibly be some comparison of notes between the son and daughter, which would awake slumbering suspicion and lead to consequences. "I might even," he reflected, "be apprehended as having been concerned in my own murder." Therefore, best to send it to the daughter, under cover by the post. Pleasant riderhood had undertaken to find out where she'd lived, and it was not necessary that it should be attended by a single word of explanation. So far straight. But all that he knew of the daughter he'd arrived from Mrs. Boffin's accounts of what she heard from Mr. Lightwood, who seemed to have a reputation for his manner of relating a story and who have made this story quite his own. It interested him, and he would like to have the means of knowing more, as, for instance, that she received the exonerating paper and that it satisfied her. By opening some channel altogether independent of Lightwood, who likewise had seen Julius Hanford, who had publicly advertised for Julius Hanford, and whom of all men he, the secretary, most avoided. But with whom the common course of things might bring me in a moment face-to-face any day in the week or any hour in the day. Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel, the boy Hexham was training for and with a schoolmaster. The secretary knew it because his sister's share that disposal of him seemed to be the best part of Lightwood's account of the family. This young fellow, sloppy, stood in need of some instruction. If he, the secretary, engaged that schoolmaster to impart it to him, the channel might be opened. The next point was, did Mrs. Boffin know the schoolmaster's name? No, but she knew where the school was. Quite enough. Promptly, the secretary wrote to the master of that school, and that very evening, Bradley Headstone, answered in person. The secretary stated to the schoolmaster how the object was, to send to him, for certain occasional evening instruction, a youth whom Mr. Mrs. Boffin wished to help to an industrious and useful place in life. The schoolmaster was willing to undertake the charge of such a pupil. The secretary inquired, on what terms? The schoolmaster stated, on what terms, agreed and disposed of. "May I ask, sir?" said Bradley Headstone. "Dear who's good opinion I owe a recommendation to you?" "You should know that I'm not the principal here. Mr. Boffin's secretary. Mr. Boffin is a gentleman who inherited a property of which you may have heard, some public mention, the Harmon Property." "Mr. Harmon?" said Bradley, who would have been a great deal more at a loss than he was, if he had known to whom he spoke, was murdered and found in the river, was murdered and found in the river. It was not, no, interposed the secretary smiling. It was not he who recommended you. Mr. Boffin heard of you through a certain Mr. Lightwood. I think you know Mr. Lightwood, or know of him. I know as much of him as I wish to know, sir. I have no acquaintance with Mr. Lightwood, and I desire none. I have no objection to Mr. Lightwood, and I have a particular objection to some of Mr. Lightwood's friends, in short to one of Mr. Lightwood's friends, his great friend. He could hardly get the words out even then and there, so fierce did he grow, though keeping himself down with an infinite pains of repression, when the careless and contemptuous bearing of Eugene Rayburn rose before his mind. The secretary saw there was a strong feeling here on some sore point, and he would have made a diversion from it, but for badly his holding to it in his cumbersome way. "I have no objection to mention the friend by name," he said doggedly. "The person I object to is Mr. Eugene Rayburn." The secretary remembered him. In his disturbed recollection of that night, when he was striving against the drug to drink, there was but a dim image of Eugene's person, but he remembered his name and his manner of speaking, and how he had gone with them to view the body and where he had stood and what he had said. "Pray, Mr. Headstone, what is the name?" he asked again, trying to make a diversion of a young Hexam's sister. "Her name is Lizzie," said the schoolmaster, with a strong contraction of his whole face. She is a young woman of a remarkable character, is she not? She is sufficiently remarkable to be very superior to Mr. Eugene Rayburn, though an ordinary person might be that," said the schoolmaster, "and I hope he will not think it impertinent in me, sir, to ask why he put the two names together." "By mere accident," returned the secretary, observing that Mr. Rayburn was a disagreeable subject with you, I tried to get away from it, though not very successfully it would appear. "Do you know Mr. Rayburn, sir?" "No." "Then perhaps the names cannot be put together on the authority of any representation of his." "Certainly not." "I took the liberty to ask," said Bradley, after casting his eyes on the ground, "because he is capable of making any representation in the swaggering levity of his insolence. I hope you will not misunderstand me, sir. I am much interested in this brother and sister, and the subject awakens very strong feelings within me, very, very strong feelings. But the shaking hand, Bradley took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. The secretary thought, as he glanced at the schoolmaster's face, that he had opened a channel here indeed, and that it was an unexpectedly dark and deep and stormy one, and difficult to sound. All at once, in the midst of his turbulent emotions, Bradley stopped, and seemed to challenge his look, much as though he suddenly asked him, "What do you see in me?" "The brother, young Hexam, was your real recommendation here," said the secretary, quietly going back to the point. Mr. and Mrs. Buffon, happening to know, through Mr. Lightwood, that he was your pupil, "Anything that I ask respecting the brother and sister, or either of them, I ask for myself, out of my own interest in the subject, and not in my official character, or on Mr. Buffon's behalf. How I come to be interested, I need not explain. You know the father's connection with the discovery of Mr. Harmon's body." "Sir," replied Bradley, very restlessly indeed, "I know all the circumstances of that case." "Pray, a tummy, Mr. Headstone," said the secretary, "and as the sisters suffer under any stigma because of the impossible accusation, groundless would be a better word that was made against the father and substantially withdrawn." "No, sir," returned Bradley with a kind of anger, "I am very glad to hear it." "The sister," said Bradley, separating his words over carefully, and speaking as if he were repeating them from a book, suffers under no reproach that repels a man of unimpeachable character who had made for himself every step of his way in life, from pacing her in his own station. I will not say, raising her to his own station, I say, placing her in it. A sister labours under no reproach unless she should, unfortunately, make it for herself. When such a man is not deterred from regarding her as his equal, and when he has convinced himself that there is no blemish on her, I think the fact must be taken to be pretty expressive. "And there is such a man," said the secretary. Bradley Headstone nodded his brows and squared his large, lower jaw, and fixed his eye on the ground with an air of determination that seemed unnecessary to the occasion, as he replied, "and there is such a man." The secretary had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakham-headed apparition once more dived into the leaving shop, and that night rogue-riderhood recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzy Hexham at her right address. All these proceedings occupied John Rokesmith so much that it was not until the following day that he saw Beller again. It seemed then to be tacitly understood between them that they were to be as distantly easy as they could without attracting the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Boughton to any marked change in their manner. The fitting-out of old Betty Higdon was favourable to this as keeping Beller engaged and interested, and as occupying the general attention. "I think," said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her while she packed her tidy basket, except Beller, who was busily helping on her knees at the chair on Richard Stewart. "That, at least, you might keep a letter in your pocket, Mr. Higdon, which I would write for you and date from here, merely stating in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Boughton that they are your friends. I won't say patrons, because they wouldn't like it." "No, no, no," said Mr. Boughton. "No, patronizing. Let's keep out of that, whatever we come to." "There's more than enough of that about without us, ain't there, Naughty?" said Mrs. Boughton. "I believe you, old lady," returned the Golden Dustman, however much indeed. "But people sometimes like to be patronised, don't they, sir?" asked Beller, looking up. "I don't. And if they do, my dear, they ought to learn better," said Mr. Boughton, "patrons and patronessies, advice-patrons, advice-patronessies, and deceased-patrons, and deceased-patronesses, and ex-wise-patrons, and ex-wise-patronesses, what does it all mean in the books of the charities that can pour in in on Nokesmith, as he sits among them pretty well up to his neck? If Mr. Tom Nokes gives these five shillings, ain't he a patron? And if Mrs. Jack Styles gives her five shillings, ain't she a patroness, what the juices he'd all about? If it ain't stark staring at me, don't, what do you call it?" "Don't be warm, Noddy," Mrs. Boughton urged. "Warm," cried Mr. Boughton, "he's enough to make a man smoky naught. I can't go anywhere without being patronised. I don't want to be patronised. If I buy a ticket for a flower show, or a music show, or any sort of show, and pay pretty every for it, why am I to be patroned and patronest, as if the patroness and patronessies treated me? If it is a good thing to be done, can't it be done in its own merits? If there's a bad thing to be done, can it ever be patroned and patronised right? Yet, when a new institution's going to be built, it seems to me, at the bricks and mortar, ain't made of half so much consequence as the patrons and patronesses. No, nor will you get the objects. I wish somebody would tell me whether other companies get patronised to anything like the extent of this one. And as to the patrons and patronesses themselves, I wonder they're not a shinder themselves. They ain't pills, or air-washes, or invigorating nervous essences to be puffed in that way. Having delivered himself of these remarks, Mr. Buffon took a trot, according to his usual custom, and trotted back to the spot from which he had started. "Yes, to the letter, Rooksmith," said Mr. Buffon, "your is right as a trivet. Give her the letter, make her take the letter, put it in her pocket by violence. She might fall sick. You know you might fall sick," said Buffon, "don't deny it, Mr. Higdon. In your obstinacy, you know you might." old Betty laughed, and said that you would take the letter and be thankful. "Let's write," said Mr. Buffon, "come, that's sensible, and don't we thank we'll do us, for we never thought of it but to Mr. Rooksmith." The letter was written and read to her, and given to her. "Now, how do you feel?" said Mr. Buffon. "Do you like it?" "The letter, sir," said Betty. "Aye, he's a beautiful letter." "No, no, not a letter," said Mr. Buffon, "the idea. Are you sure or strong enough to carry out the idea?" "I shall be stronger and keep the deadness off better this way than any way left open to me, sir." "Don't say, than any way left open, you know," urged Mr. Buffon, "because there are ways without end. A housekeeper will be acceptable over yonder at the bower, for instance. Wouldn't you like to see the bower?" And now a retired literary man of the name of Whig that lives there with a wooden leg. Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting her black bonnet and shawl. "I wouldn't let you go. Now it comes to this, after all," said Mr. Buffon, "if I didn't hope that it may make a man and a workman of sloppy. In a shorter time, I was ever a man and workman was made yet. Why, what have you got there, Betty? Not at all." It was the man in the guards who had been on duty over Johnny's bed. The solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her dress. Then she gratefully took leave of Mrs. Buffon, and of Mr. Buffon, and of Rooksmith, and then put her old withered arms round bellows young and blooming neck, and said, repeating Johnny's words, "A kiss for the Bufa Lady." The secretary looked on from a doorway at the Bufa Lady thus encircled, and still looked on at the Bufa Lady standing alone there, when the determined old figure with its steady bright eyes was trudging through the streets, away from paralysis and porporism. End of Book 2 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 The Whole Case So Far Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with Lizzie Hexham. In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling a little short of desperation, and feeling abided by him. It was very soon after his interview with the secretary that he and Charlie Hexham set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peacher, to have this desperate interview accomplished. "That doll's dressmaker," said Bradley, "is favourable neither to me nor to you, Hexham." A perd, crooked little chit, Mr. Headstone. I knew she put herself in the way if she could, and would be sure to strike him with something important. He was on that account, and I proposed I were going to the city tonight and meeting my sister. "So I supposed," said Bradley, getting his gloves on his nervous hands as he walked. "So I supposed…" "Nobody but my sister," pursued Charlie, would have found out such an extraordinary companion. She's done it in ridiculous, pensive, giving herself up to another. She told me so, that night when we went there. "Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?" asked Bradley. "Oh," said the boy, colouring, "one of her romantic ideas. I tried to convince her so, but I didn't succeed. However, what we've got to do is to succeed tonight, Mr. Headstone, and then all the rest follows." "You are still a sanguine, Hexam." "Certainly I am, sir." "Why?" "We have everything on our side." "Except your sister, perhaps," thought Bradley, but he only gloomily thought it, and said nothing. "Everything on our side," repeated the boy, with boyish confidence, "respectability, an excellent connection for me, common sense, everything." "To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted sister," said Bradley, willing to sustain himself on even that low ground of hope. "Actually, Miss Headstone, are the good deal of influence with her. And now that you have honoured me with your confidence, and spoken to me first, I'll say again, we have everything on our side." And Bradley thought again, except your sister, perhaps. A grey, dusty, withered evening in London City has not a hopeful aspect. The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning. The towers and steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark and dingy, as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom. A sundial on a church wall has the look in its useless black shade of having failed in its business enterprise, and stopped payment forever. Melancholy waifs and strays of housekeepers and porters sweep melancholy waifs and strays of papers and pins into the kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything to sell. The set of humanity outward from the city is as a set of prisoners departing from jail, and dismal new-gate seems quite as fit a stronghold for the mighty Lord Mayor as his own state dwelling. On such an evening, when the city-grit gets into the hair and eyes and skin, and when the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city-trees grind down in corners under wheels of wind, the schoolmaster and the pupil emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward for Lizzy. Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner, waiting for her to appear. The best-looking amongst us will not look very well lurking at a corner, and Bradley came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed. "Here she comes, Mr. Headstown. Let us go forward and meet her." As they advanced, she saw them coming, and seemed rather troubled, but she greeted her brother with the usual warmth and touched the extended hand of Bradley. "Why, where are you going, Charlie dear?" She asked him then. "Nowhere we came on purpose to meet you." "To meet me, Charlie?" "Yes. We're going to walk with you. But don't let us take the great leading-street, where everyone walks, and we can't hear ourselves speak. Let us go by the quiet backways. Here's a large paved court by this church and quiet, too. Let us go up here." "But it's not in the way, Charlie." "Yes, it is," said the boy petulently. "It's in my way, and my way is yours." She had not released his hand, and still holding it, looked at him with a kind of appeal. He avoided her eyes, under pretense of saying, "Come along, Mr. Headstown." Bradley walked at his side, not at hers, and the brother and sister walked hand in hand. The court brought them to a churchyard, a paved square court with a raised bank of earth about breast high in the middle, enclosed by iron rails. Here, conveniently and healthfully, elevated above the level of the living, were the dead, and the tombstones, some of the latter droopingly inclined from the perpendicular as if they were ashamed of the lies they told. They paced the whole of this place once in a constrained and uncomfortable manner, when the boy stopped, and said, "Lizzy, Mr. Headstown has something to say to you. I don't wish to be an interruption either to him or to you, and so I'll go and take a little star and come back. I know, in a general way, what Mr. Headstown intends to say, and I very highly approve of it, as I hope, and, indeed, I do not doubt, you will. I needn't tell you, Lizzy, that I am under great obligations to Mr. Headstown, and that I am very anxious for Mr. Headstown to succeed in all he undertakes, as I hope, and as, indeed, I don't doubt, you must be." "Charlie," returned his sister, detaining his hand as he withdrew it, "I think you would better stay. I think Mr. Headstown better not say what he thinks of saying." "Why, er, do you know what it is?" returned the boy. "Perhaps I don't, but perhaps you don't. No, Liz, I should think not. If you knew what it was, you would give me a very different answer. There, let go, be sensible. I want to you don't remember that Mr. Headstown is looking on." She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying, "Now, Liz, be a rational girl, and a good sister." Walked away. She remained standing alone with Bradley Headstown, and it was not until she raised her eyes that he spoke. "I said," he began, "when I saw you last, there was something unexplained which might perhaps influence you. I come this evening to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest disadvantage. It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I know you see me at my worst." She moved slowly on when he paused, and he moved slowly on beside her. "It seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself," he resumed, "but whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears, below what I want to say, and different from what I want to say, I can't help it. So it is. You are the ruin of me." She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the passionate action of his hands, with which they were accompanied. "Yes, you are the ruin of me. I have no resources in myself. I have no competence in myself. I have no government of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts. And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been critter for you since I first saw you." "Oh, that's a wretched day for me. That was a wretched, miserable day." A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she said, "Mr. Headstand, I am grieved to have done you any harm, but I have never meant it." "There," he cried despairly, "now I seem to have reproach to you instead of revealing to you the state of my own mind. Bear with me, I am always wrong when you are in question. It is my doom." Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted windows of the houses, as if there could be anything written in their grimy pains that would help him, he paced the whole pavement at her side before he spoke again. "I must try to give expression to what is in my mind. It shall and must be spoken. Though you see me so confounded, though you strike me so helpless, I ask you to believe that there are many people who think well of me, that there are some people who highly esteem me that I have in my way one a station which is considered worth winning." "Surely, Mr. Headstand, I do believe it. Surely I have always known it from Charlie." "I ask you to believe that if I were to offer my home, such as it is, my station, such as it is, my affections, such as they are, to any one of the best considered and rest qualified and most distinguished among the young women engaged in my calling, they would probably be accepted, even readily accepted." "I do not doubt it," said Lucy, with her eyes upon the ground. "I have sometimes had it in my thought to make that offer and to settle down as many men of my class do. I, on the one side of a school, my wife, on the other, both of us interested in the same work." "Why have you not done so?" asked Lizzy Hexham. "Why do you not do so?" "Far better than I never did. The only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks," he said, always speaking passionately and, when most emphatic, repeating that former action of his hands which was like flinging his heart's blood down before her in drops upon the pavement stones. "The only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks is that I never did, for if I had, and if the same spell had come upon me for my ruin, I know I should have broken that tie asunder as if it had been a thread." She glanced at him with a glance of fear and a shrinking gesture. He answered as if she had spoken. "No. It would not have been voluntary on my part any more than it is voluntary in me to be here now. You draw me to you. If I were shut up in a strong prison you would draw me out. I should break through the wall to come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed you would draw me up the stackety of feet and fall there. The wild energy of the man, now quite let loose, was absolutely terrible. He stopped and laid his hand upon a piece of the coping of the burial grounding closure as if he would have dislodged the stone. "No man knows till the time comes what depths are within him. To some men it never comes. Let them rest and be thankful. To me you brought it. On me you forced it and the bottom of this raging sea, striking himself upon the breast, has been heaved up ever since. Mr. Hittstone, I've heard enough. Let me stop you here. It will be better for you and better for me. Let us find my brother. Not yet. It shall and must be spoken. I have been in torments ever since I stopped short of it before. You are alarmed. It is another of my miseries that I cannot speak to you or speak of you without stumbling at every syllable. And as I let the check go all together and run mad, here is a man lighting the lamps. He will be gone directly. I entreat of you, let us walk round this place again. You have no reason to look alarmed. I can restrain myself and I will." She yielded to the entreaty. How could she do otherwise? And they paced the stones in silence. One by one the lights leaped up, making the cold grey church tower more remote, and they were alone again. He said no more until they had regained the spot where he had broken off. There he again stood still, and again grasped the stone. In saying what he said then, he never looked at her, but looked at it, and wrenched at it. "You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain and which over masters me. You could draw me to fire. You could draw me to water. You could draw me to the gallows. You could draw me to any death. You could draw me to anything. I have most avoided. You could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good, every good, with equal force. My circumstances are quite easy, and you would want for nothing. My reputation stands quite high and would be a shield for yours. If you saw me at my work, able to do it well and respected in it, you might even come to take a sort of pride at me. I would try hard that you should. Whatever considerations I may have thought of against this offer, I have conquered, and I make it with all my heart. Your brother Faye was me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together. Anyhow, let us certain that he would have my best influence and support. I don't know what I could say more if I tried. I might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that, if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in thorough earnest, dreadful earnest. The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wrenched, battled on the pavement to confirm his words. "Mr. Headstone, stop. I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place once more. It will give you a minute's time to think and me a minute's time to get some fortitude together." Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same place, and again he worked at the stone. "Is it?" he said, with his attention apparently engrossed by it. "Yes." "Or no?" "Mr. Headstone, I thank you sincerely. I thank you gratefully, and help you may find a worthy wife before long, and be very happy. But it is no." "Is no short time necessary for reflection? No weeks or days?" he asked, in the same half suffocated way. "No more tether." "Are you quite decided? And is there no chance of any change in my favour?" "I'm quite decided, Mr. Headstone, and I am bound to answer. I am certain there is none." "Then," said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid the knuckles raw and bleeding. "Then I hope that I may never kill him." The dark look of hatred and revenge, with which the words broke from his livid lips, and of which he stood holding out his smeared hand as if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow, made her so afraid of him that she turned to run away, but he caught her by the arm. "Mr. Headstone, let me go. Mr. Headstone, I must call for help." "It is I who should call for help," he said. "You don't know yet how much I need it." The working of his face, as she shrank from it, glancing round for her brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in another instant. But all at once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as if death itself had done so. "There, you see, I have recovered myself. Hear me out." With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-reliant life and her right to be free from accountability to this man, she released her arm from his grasp and stood looking full at him. She had never been so handsome in his eyes. A shade came over them while he looked back at her as if she drew the very light out of them to herself. "This time at least, I will leave nothing unsaid." He went on, folding his hands before him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any impetuous gesture. "This, last time at least, I will not be tortured with afterthoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr. Eugene Rayburn. What did of him you spoke in your ungovernable rage and violence? Is he hexomed demanded with spirit?" He bit his lip and looked at her and said never a word. "What did Mr. Rayburn that you threatened?" He bit his lip again and looked at her and said never a word. "You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak. Let me find my brother." "Stay." I threatened no one. Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand. He lifted it to his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve and again folded it over the other. "Mr. Eugene Rayburn," he repeated. "Why do you mention that name again and again, Mr. Headstand?" "Because it is the text of the little I have left to say. Observe. There are no threats in it. If I utter a threat, stop me and fasten it upon me. Mr. Eugene Rayburn." "A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the name could hardly have escaped him." "He haunts you. You accept favours from him. You are willing enough to listen to him. I know it as well as he does." "Mr. Rayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir," said Lizzie proudly, "in connection with the death and with the memory of my poor father." "No doubt. He is, of course, a very considerate and a very good man, Mr. Eugene Rayburn." "He has nothing to you, I think," said Lizzie, with an indignation she could not repress. "Oh, yes he is. There you mistake. He is much to me." "What can he be to you?" "He can be a rival to me among other things," said Bradley. "Mr. Headstone," returned Lizzie with a burning face, "he is cowardly in you to speak to me in this way, but it makes me able to tell you that I do not like you, and that I have never liked you from the first, and that no other living creature has anything to do with the effect you have produced upon me for yourself." His head bent for a moment as if under a weight, and he then looked up again, moistening his lips. "I was going on with the little I had left to say. I knew all this about Mr. Eugene Rayburn, all the while you were drawing me to you. I strove against the knowledge, but quite in vain. It made no difference in me. With Mr. Eugene Rayburn in my mind I went on. With Mr. Eugene Rayburn in my mind I spoke to you just now. With Mr. Eugene Rayburn in my mind I had been set aside, and I had been cast out." "If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal and declining it, is it my fault, Mr. Headstone?" said Lizzie, compassionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal, almost as much as she was repelled and alarmed by it. "I am not complaining," you returned. "I am only stating the case. I had to wrestle with myself, respect my submitted to be drawn to you in spite of Mr. Rayburn. You may imagine how low my self-respect lies now." She was hurt and angry, but repressed herself in consideration of his suffering, and of his being her brother's friend. "And it lies under his feet," said Bradley, unfolding his hands in spite of himself, and fiercely motioning with them both towards the stones of the pavement. "Remember that. It lies under that fellow's feet, and he treads upon it and exalts above it." "He does not," said Lizzie. "He does," said Bradley. "I have stood before him face to face, and he crushed me down in the dirt of his contempt, and walked over me. Why?" Because he knew with triumph what was in store for me tonight. "Oh, Mr. Headstone, you talk quite wildly, quite collectively. I know what I say too well." "Now I have said all. I've used no threat to remember. I've done no more than show you how the case stands, how the case stands so far." At this moment her brother sauntered into view close by. She darted to him and caught him by the hand. Bradley followed and laid his heavy hand on the boy's opposite shoulder. "Johnny Hexham, I'm going home. I must walk home by myself tonight, and get shut up in my room without being spoken to. Give me half an hour's start, and let me be, till you find me at my work in the morning. I shall be at my work in the morning, just as usual." Clasping his hands, he added a short, unearthly, broken cry, and went his way. The brother and sister were left looking at one another, near a lamp in the solitary churchyard, and the boy's face clouded and darkened, as he said, in a rough tone. "What is the meaning of this? What have you done to my best friend? I help with the truth." "Charlie," said his sister, "speak a little more considerably. I am not a dehumour for consideration, or for an up-sense of any sort," replied the boy, "what have you been doing? Why is Mr. Headstone come from us in that way?" "He... asked me. You know he asked me to be his wife, Charlie." "Well," said the boy impatiently, "and I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife." "You were obliged to tell him," repeated the boy angrily, between his teeth, and rudely pushing her away. "You were obliged to tell him. Do you know that he is worth fifty of you?" "It may easily be so, Charlie, but I cannot marry him. You mean that you are conscious, that you can't appreciate him, and don't deserve him, I suppose?" "I mean, but I do not like him, Charlie, and that I will never marry him." "A pawn by soul," exclaimed the boy, "you are a nice picture of a sister. For my soul, you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness. And so all my endeavors to cancel the past, and arise myself in the world, and to raise you with me, are beaten down by your low whims, are they?" "I will not reproach you, Charlie." "Yeah," exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness, "she won't reproach me. She does best to destroy my fortunes in her own, and she won't reproach me." "Why, you tell me next that you wrote reproach was to headstone, for coming out of the sphere to which he is an ornament, and putting himself at your feet to be rejected by you?" "No, Charlie. I will only tell you, as I tell to myself, that I thank him for doing so, and I am sorry he did so, and that I hope he will do much better and be happy." "Some touch of compunction," smoked the boy's hardening heart as he looked upon her, his patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend, advisor, and reclaimer in boyhood, the self-forgetting sister who had done everything for him, his tone relented, and he drew her arm through his. "Now, Camley's, don't it us quarrel? Let us be reasonable, and talk this over, like brother and sister. Will you listen to me?" "Oh, Charlie," she replied, through her starting tears. "Do I not listen to you, and hear many hard things?" "Then I am sorry. There is, I am unfoundly sorry. And will you two put me out, so?" "Now, see, Mr. Headstown is perfectly devoted to you. He has told me in the strongest manner that he has never been his old self for one single minute since I have first brought him to see you. Miss Peter, our school mistress, pretty and young, and all that, is now to be very much attached to him, and he won't so much as look at her, all year over. Now, his devotion to you must be a disinterested one, mustn't it? If he married Miss Peach, he would be a great deal better off in all worldly respects than he marrying you. Well, then, he has nothing to get by it, as he. "Nothing, heaven knows." "Very well, then," said the boy, "that's something in his favour, and a great thing." "Then I come in. Mr. Headstown has always got me on, and he has a good deal in his power, and of course, if he was my brother-in-law, he wouldn't get me on less, but would get me on more. Mr. Headstone comes and confides in me in a very delicate way and says, 'I hope my marrying your sister will be agreeable to you, Exum, and useful to you.' I say, there is nothing in the world, Mr. Headstone, that I could be better pleased with. Mr. Headstone says, 'Then I may rely upon your intimate knowledge of me, for your good-word with your sister, Exum.' And I say, 'Certainly, Mr. Headstone, and naturally, I have a good deal of influence with her.' "So I have, haven't I, Liz?" "Yes, Charlie." "Well," said. "Now, you see, we begin to get on. The moment we begin to be really talking it over, not brother and sister. Very well. Then you come in. As Mr. Headstone's wife, you will be occupying a most respectable station. And you will be holding a far better place in society than you hold now. And you will, at length, get quick of the riverside, and the old disagreeable was belonging to it. And you will be rid for good of dolled dressmakers and their drunken fathers and the like of that. Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny when. I dare say, she is all very well in her way, but her way is not your way, as Miss Headstone's wife. Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts, Miss Headstone's, our mind, our yours, nothing could be better or more desirable. They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood still to see what effect he had made. His sister's eyes were fixed upon him, but as they showed no yielding, and as she remained silent, he walked her on again. There was some discomfort in his tone as he resumed, though he tried to conceal it. Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should have done better to have had a little chat with you in the first instance before Miss Headstone spoke for himself. But really, all this in his favour seems so plain and undeniable, I knew you to have always been so reasonable and sensible, I didn't consider it worthwhile. Very likely that was a mistake of mine. However, it soon set right. All it need be done, to set it right, is for you to tell me at once that I may go home and tell Mr. Headstone that what was taken place is not final, and it will all come round by and by. He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at him, which he shook her head. "Can't you speak?" said the boy sharply. "I'm very unwilling to speak, Charlie. If I must, I must. I cannot authorise you to say any such thing to Mr. Headstone. I cannot allow you to say any such thing to Mr. Headstone. Nothing remains to be said to him from me, after what I have said for good and all tonight." "And this girl," cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again, "calls herself a sister." "Charlie, dear, that is the second time that you have almost struck me. Don't be hurt by my words. I don't mean heaven forbid that you intended it, but you hardly know with what a sudden swing you removed yourself from me. However," said the boy, taking no heed of the remonestance, and pursuing his own mortified disappointment, "I know what this means, and you shall not disgrace me." "It means what I've told you, Charlie, and nothing more. That's not true," said the boy in a violent tone, "and you know it's not. It means your precious Mr. Rayburn. That's what it means." "Charlie, if you remember any old days of ours together, for bear, that you shall not disrace me," doggedly pursued the boy. "I am determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire, you shall not pull me down. You can't disgrace me if I have nothing to do with you, and I will have nothing to do with you for the future." "Charlie, on many a night like this, and many a worst night, I have sat on the stones of the street, hashing you in my arms, and say those words without even saying you're sorry for them, and my arms are open to you still, and so is my heart." "I am not unsaid them. I'll say them again. You are an invectrately bad girl, and a false sister, and I'll done with you, forever I have done with you." He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if he'd set up a barrier between them, and flung himself upon his heel and left her. She remained impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless, until the striking of the church clock roused her, and she turned away. But then with the breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the waters at the cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen, and "Oh, that I'm relying here with the dead!" "And, oh, Charlie, Charlie, are they should be the end of our pictures in the fire?" "For all the words," she said, as she laid her face in her hands on the stone coping. A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at her. It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large, brimmed, low-crowned hat, and a long-skirted coat. After hesitating a little, the figure turned back, and advancing with an air of gentleness and compassion, said, "Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some distress of mind. I cannot pass upon my way and leave you weeping here alone, as if there was nothing in the place. Can I help you? Can I do anything to give you comfort?" She raised her head at the sound of these kind words and answered gladly, "Oh, Mr. Vryer, is it you?" "My daughter," said the old man, "I stand amazed. I spoke as to a stranger. Take my arm, take my arm, what grieves you, who has done this poor girl poor girl." "My brother has quarreled with me," said Lizzy, and pronounced me. "Here's a thankless dog," said the Jew angrily, "let him go. Shake the dust on thy feet and let him go. Come, daughter, come home with me. It is but across the road, and take a little time to recover your peace and to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you company through the streets, for it is past your usual time and will soon be late, and the way is long, and there is much company out of doors tonight." She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out of the churchyard. They were in the act of emerging into the main thoroughfare, when another figure, loitering discontentedly by, and looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and exclaimed, "Lizzy, why, where have you been? Why, what's the matter?" As Eugene Rayburn thus addressed her, she drew closer to the Jew and bent her head. The Jew, having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp glance, cast his eyes upon the ground, and stood mute. "Lizzy, what is the matter?" "Mr. Rayburn, I cannot tell you now. I cannot tell you tonight, if I ever can tell you. Pray, leave me." "But, Lizzy, I came expressly to join you. I came to walk home with you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighbourhood, and knowing your hour, and I have been lingering about," added Eugene, "like a bailiff, or, with a look-a-dryer, an older clothesman." The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in Eugene once more, at another glance. "Mr. Rayburn, pray. Pray, leave me with this protector, and one thing more. Pray, pray be careful of yourself." "Mr. Rayburn! Mr. Rayburn!" said Eugene with a look of wonder. "May I be excused for asking, in the elderly gentleman's presence, who is this kind protector?" "A trustworthy friend," said Lizzy. "I will relieve him of his trust," returned Eugene, "but you must tell me, Lizzy, what is the matter?" "Her brother is the matter," said the old man, lifting up his eyes again. "My brother, the matter?" returned Eugene with airy contempt. "Our brother has not worth a thought, far less a tear. And what has our brother done?" The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at Rayburn, and one grave glance at Lizzy, as she stood looking down. Both were so full of meaning that even Eugene was checked in his light career and subsided into a thoughtful "hmmm." With an air of perfect patience, the old man, remaining mute, and keeping his eyes cast down, stood retaining Lizzy's arm. As though in his habit of passive endurance, it would be all one to him if he had stood there motionless all night. "If Mr. Aaron," said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, "will be good enough to relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any engagement she may have at the synagogue." "Mr. Aaron, will you have the kindness?" "But the old man stood stock still." "Good evening, Mr. Aaron," said Eugene politely, "we need not detain you." Then turning to Lizzy, "is our friend Mr. Aaron a little deaf?" "My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman," replied the old man calmly, "but I will hear only one voice tonight, desiring me to leave this damsel before I have conveyed her to her home. If she requests it, I will do it. I will do it for no one else." "May I ask why, sir, Mr. Aaron?" said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his ease. "Excuse me, if she asks me, I will tell her," replied the old man, "I will tell no one else." "I do not ask you," said Lizzy, "and I beg you to take me home." "Mr. Rayburn, I have had a bitter trial tonight, and I hope you not think me ungrateful or mysterious or changeable. I am neither. I am wretched. Pray remember what I said to you. Pray, pray, take care." "My dear Lizzy," he returned in a low voice, bending over her on the other side, "of what? Of whom?" "Of anyone who have lately seen and made angry," he snapped his fingers and laughed. "And come," said he, "since no better, maybe, Mr. Aaron and I will divide this trust and see you home together. Mr. Aaron, on that side, I, on this, if perfectly agreeable to Mr. Aaron, the escort, will now proceed." He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist upon his leaving her. He knew that. Her fears for him being aroused, she would be uneasy if you were out of her sight. For all his seeming levity and carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to know of the thoughts of her heart. And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been urged against him, so superior in his sallies and self-possession to the gloomy constraint of her suitor and the selfish petulance of her brother, so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was faithless, what an immense advantage, what an overpowering influence were his that night. Add to the rest poor girl that she had heard him vilified for her sake, and that she had suffered for his, and where the wonder that his occasional tones of serious interest, setting off his carelessness as if it were assumed to calm her, that his lightest touch, his lightest look, his very presence beside her in the dark, common street, were like glimpses of an enchanted world, which was natural for jealousy and malice and all meanness to be unable to bear the brightness of, and to gird at as bad spirits might. Nothing more being said of repairing to Ryors, they went direct to Lizzie's lodging, a little short of the house-door she parted from them, and went in alone. "Mr. Aaron," said Eugene, when they were left together in the street, "with many thanks for your company, it remains for me unwillingly to say farewell." "Sir," returned the other, "I give you good night, and I wish that you were not so thoughtless." "Mr. Aaron," returned Eugene, "I give you good night, and I wish, for you are a little dull, that you are not so thoughtful." But now that his part was played out for the evening, and when, in turning his back upon the Jew, he came off the stage, he was thoughtful himself. "How did Lightwood's catechism run?" he murmured, as he stopped to light a cigar. "What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going? We shall soon know now, ah, with a heavy sigh." The heavy sigh was repeated to this by an echo, an hour afterwards, when Raya, who had been sitting on some dark steps in a corner over against the house, arose and went his patient way, stealing through the streets in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed time. The estimable Tremlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the stable yard in Duke Street, St. James's, and hearing the horses of their toilet below, finds himself on the whole in a disanphantages position, as compared with the noble animals at livery. For whereas, on the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and require him in gruff accents to come up and come over; still, on the other hand, he has no attendant at all; and the mild gentleman's finger joints and other joints, working rustily in the morning, he could deem it agreeable even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber door, so he were there skillfully rubbed down and slushed and slushed and polished and clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in these trying transactions. How the fascinating tippens gets on, when eraying herself for the bewilderment of the senses of men, is known only to the graces and her maid; but perhaps even that engaging creature, though not reduced to the self-dependence of Tremlow, could dispense with a good deal of the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that as to her face, and neck this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal species of lobster, throwing off a shell every forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot until the new crust hardens. Howbeit Tremlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat, and wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast, and to breakfast with whom, but his near-neighbors the lemmas of Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman Mr. Fledgeby. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgeby, but the peaceable Tremlow reasons if he is my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a man is not to know him. It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr. Mrs. Lanell, and the celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired scale of sumptuosity cannot be achieved within less limits than those of the non-existent palatial residents of which so many people are madly envious. So Tremlow trips with not a little stiffness across Piccadilly, sensible of having once been more upright and figure, and less in danger of being knocked down by swift vehicles. To be sure that was in the days when he hoped for leave from the dreaded Snigsworth to do something, or be something in life, and before that magnificent tartar issued the UKs, as he will never distinguish himself he must be a poor gentleman pensioner of mine and let him hereby consider himself pensioned. Ah, my Tremlow, say little feeble grey personage, what thoughts are in thy breast today, of the fancy, so still to call her who bruised thy heart when it was green and thy head brown, and whether it be better or worse, more painful or less to believe in the fancy to this hour, than to know her for a greedy, armour-plated crocodile, with no more capacity of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy waistcoat than of going straight at it with a knitting needle. Say, likewise, my Tremlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush, giving the hack-horses to drink out of the shallow Talbot the coat-stand into which thou has so nearly set thy uncertain foot. Tremlow says nothing and goes on. As he approaches the lama's door, drives up a little one-horse carriage containing Tippins the divine. Tippins, letting down the window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in being and waiting there to hand her out. Tremlow hands her out with as much polite gravity as if she were anything real, and they proceed upstairs. Tippins all abroad about the legs and seeking to express that those unsteady articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy. "And dear Mrs. Lemmel, and dear Mr. Lemmel, how do you do? And when are you going down to what its name-place? Guy, Earl Warwick, you know. What is it, dung cow, to claim the flitch of bacon? And Mortimer, whose name is forever blotted out from my list of lovers, by reason first of fickleness, and then of base desertion, how do you do, wretch? And Mr. Rayburn, you here, what can you come for, because we're all very sure beforehand that you're not going to talk? And the nearing MP, how are things going on down at the house, and when will you turn out those terrible people for us? And Mrs. the nearing, my dear, can it positively be true that you go down to that stifling place, night after night, to hear those men prose? A talking of which, nearing, why don't you prose, for you haven't opened your lips there yet, and we're dying to hear what you have got to say to us. Miss Podsnap, charmed to see you. Apart here? No. Ma, neither. Oh. Mr. Boots, delighted. Mr. Brewer. This is a gathering of the clans. Thus, tippens, and surveys fledgeby and outsiders through golden glass, murmuring as she turns about and about, in her innocent, giddy way. Anybody else I know? No, I think not. Nobody there, nobody there, nobody anywhere. Mr. Lamel, all a glitter, produces his friend, fledgeby, as dying for the honor of presentation to Lady Tippens. fledgeby presented, has the air of going to say something, has the air of going to say nothing, has an air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of desolation. Backs on Brewer makes the tour of Boots and fades into the extreme background, feeling for his whisker as it might have turned up since he was there five minutes ago. But Lamel has him out again before he has so much as completely ascertained the bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad way, fledgeby, for Lamel represents him as dying again. He is dying now of want a presentation to Tremlow. Tremlow offers his hand, glad to see him. "Your mother, sir, was a connection of mine." "I believe, sir," says Pletry, "but my mother and her family were too." "Are you staying in town?" asks Tremlow. "I always am," says Pletry. "You like town." Says Tremlow, but is felt flat by Fledgeby's taking it quite ill and replying, "No, he don't like town." Lamel tries to break the force of the fall by remarking that some people do not like town. Fledgeby retorting, but he never heard of any such case but his own. Tremlow goes down again, heavily. "There is nothing I knew this morning, I suppose," says Tremlow, returning to the mark with great spirit. "Fledgeby has not heard of anything." "No, there's not a word of news," says Lamel. "Not a particle," adds Boot. "Not an atom," chimes in Brewer. Somehow the execution of this little concerted peace appears to raise the general spirits as with the sense of duty done and sets the company are going. Everybody seems more equal than before to the calamity of being in the society of everybody else. Even Eugene, standing in a window, moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a smarter jerk now as if he found himself in better case. Breakfast announced, "Everything on table showy and gaudy, but with a self-assertingly temporary and nomadic air on the decorations, as boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy in the palatial residence." Mr. Lamel's own particular servant behind his chair, the analytical behind Veneering's chair, instances in point that such servants fall into two classes, one mistrusting the master's acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master, Mr. Lamel's servant of the second class, appearing to be lost in wonder and low spirits because the police are so long in coming to take his master up on some charge of the first magnitude. Veneering MP on the right of Mrs. Lamel, Twemlow on her left, Mrs. Veneering, W.M.P., wife of Member of Parliament, and Lady Tippins on Mr. Lamel's right and left. But be sure that well within the fascination of Mr. Lamel's eye and smile sits little Georgiana, and be sure that close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same gingerous gentleman, sits fledgling. Often than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr. Twemlow gives a little sudden turn towards Mrs. Lamel, and then says to her, "I beg your pardon." This not being Twemlow's usual way, why is it his way today? Why the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly labours under the impression that Mrs. Lamel is going to speak to him, and turning finds that it is not so, and mostly that she has her eyes upon veneering. Strange that this impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected, yet so it is. Lady Tippins partaking pentately of the fruits of the earth, including great juice in the category, becomes livelier, and applies herself to illicit sparks from Mortimer Lightwood. It is always understood, among the initiated, that that faithless lover must be planted table opposite to Lady Tippins, who will then strike conversational fire out of him. In a pause of mastication and de-glutiation, Lady Tippins contemplating Mortimer recalls that it was at our dear veneerings, and in the presence of a party who are surely all here, that he told them his story of the man from somewhere, which afterwards became so horribly interesting and vulgarly popular. "Yes," Lady Tippins, a sense Mortimer, as they say on the stage, "even so." "Then we expect to," retorts the charmer, "to sustain your reputation and tell us something else." Lady Tippins exhausted myself a life that day, and there is nothing more to be got out of me. Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere is as Eugene, not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the friend, and whom he has founded himself. "But," quote the fascinating Tippins, "I am resolved on getting something more out of you, traitor. What is this I hear about another disappearance?" "As it is you who have heard it," returns Lightwood, "perhaps you'll tell us." "Monster away," retorts Lady Tippins. "Your own golden dustman referred me to you." Mr. Lamel, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel to the story of the man from somewhere, silence and sews upon the proclamation. "I assure you," says Lightwood, glancing round the table, "I have nothing to tell." But Eugene, adding in a low voice, "there, tell it, tell it." He corrects himself with the addition nothing worth mentioning. Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth mentioning and become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by a perception to the same effect. But it is understood that his attention is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the tone of the House of Commons. "Pray, don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen," says Mortimer Lightwood, "because I shall have finished long before you have fallen into comfortable attitudes. It's like, it's like," impatiently interrupts Eugene, "the children's narrative. I'll tell you a story of Jack a minority, and now my stories began. I'll tell you another, of Jack and his brother, and now my story is done. Get on and get it over." Eugene says this with the sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in his chair and looking bailfully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as her dear bear, and playfully insinuates that she, a self-evident proposition, is beauty, and he beast. The reference precedes Mortimer, which I suppose to be made by my honourable and fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance. Very lately the young woman, Lizzie Hexen, daughter of the late Jesse Hexen, otherwise gaffer, who will be remembered to have found the body of the man from somewhere, mysteriously received, she knew not from whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father by another waterside character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed them, because, little rogue Riderhood, I am tempted into the paraphrase by remembering the charming wolf, who would have rendered society great service if he had devoured Mr. Riderhood's father and mother in their infancy. Had previously played fast and loose with the said charges, and, in fact, abandoned them. However, the retraction I have mentioned found its way into Lizzie Hexen's hands with a general flavour on it of having been favoured by some anonymous messenger in a dark, cloak and slouched hat, and was by her, forwarded in her father's vindication to Mr. Boughton, my client. You will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but as I never had another client, and in all likelihood never shall have, I am rather proud of him as a natural curiosity, probably unique. Although as easy as usual on the surface, Lightwood is not quite as easy as usual below it. With an air of not minding Eugene at all, he feels that the subject is not altogether a safe one in that connection. "The natural curiosity which forms the sole ornament of my professional museum," he resumes, "hereupon desires his secretary, an individual of the hermit crab or oyster species, and whose name I think is Chuck Smith. But it doesn't, in the least matter," say Artichoke, to put himself in communication with Lizzie Hexen. Artichoke professes his readiness so to do, endeavors to do so, but fails. "Why fails?" asks Boots. "How fails?" asks Brewer. "A pardon me," returns Lightwood, "I must postpone the reply for one moment, or we shall have an anti-climax." Artichoke failing signally, my client refers the task to me, as purpose being to advance the interests of the object of his search. I proceed to put myself in communication with her. I even happen to possess some special means, with a glance at Eugene. I'm putting myself in communication with her, but I fail too, because she has vanished. Vanished is the general echo. "Disappeared," says Mortimer. "Nobody knows how, nobody knows when, nobody knows where, and so ends the story to which my honorable and fair and slave opposite referred. "Tippens, with a wee witching little scream, are pines that we shall every one of us be murdered in our beds. Eugene, eyes her as if some of us would be enough for him. Mrs. Vanearing, W.M.P., remarks that these social mysteries make one afraid of leaving baby. Vanearing, M.P., wishes to be informed, with something of a second-hand air of seeing the right honorable gentleman at the head of the home department in his place, whether it is intended to be conveyed that the vanished person has been spirited away or otherwise harmed, instead of Lightwood's answering Eugene answers, and answers hastily and vexately. "No, no, no, no. He doesn't mean that. He means voluntarily vanished, but utterly completely." However, the great subject of the happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Lamel must not be allowed to vanish with the other vanishments. With the vanishing of the murderer, the vanishing of Julius Hanford, the vanishing of Lizzy Hexham, and therefore for nearing must recall the present sheep to the pen from which they have strayed. Who so fit to discourse of the happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Lamel, they being the dearest and oldest friends he has in the world, or what audience so fit for him to take into his confidence as that audience, a noun of multitude or signifying many, who are all the oldest and dearest friends he has in the world. So, veneering, without deformality of rising, launches into a familiar oration gradually toning into the parliamentary sing-song in which he sees at that board his dear friend Tremlow, who on that day twelve month bestowed on his dear friend Lamel, the fair hand of his dear friend Saphronia, and in which he also sees at that board his dear friend's boots and brewer, who's rallying round him at a period when his dear friend Lady Tippens likewise rallied round him, I and in the foremost rank he can never forget, while memory holds her seat. But he is free to confess that he misses from that board his dear old friend Pottsnap, though he is well represented by his dear young friend Georgiana, and he further sees at that board, this he announces with pomp as if exulting in the powers of an extraordinary telescope, his friend Mr. Fedgeby, if he will permit him to call him so. For all of these reasons, and many more which he right well knows will have occurred to persons of your exceptional acuteness, he is here to submit to you that the time has arrived when, with our hearts and our glasses, with tears in our eyes, with blessings in our lips, and in a general way with the profusion of gammon and spinach in our emotional larders, we should one and all drink to our dear friends the lamels, wishing them many years as happy as the last, and many many friends as congenially united as themselves. And this he will add, that Anastasia Veneering, who is instantly her to weep, is formed on the same model as her old and chosen friend Saphronia Lamel, in respect that she is devoted to the man who woo'd and won her, and nobly discharges the duties of a wife. Seeing no better way out of it, Veneering here pulls up his oratorical pegasus extremely short and plumps down clean over his head with "Lamel, God bless you." Then Lamel, too much of him every way, pervadingly too much nose of a coarse wrong shape, and his nose and his mind and his manners, too much smile to be real, too much frown to be false, too many large teeth to be visible at once without suggesting a bite. He thanks you, dear friends, for your kindly greeting and hopes to receive you it may be on the next of these delightful occasions in a residence better suited to your claims on the rights of hospitality. You will never forget that Veneering's the first source of Saphronia. Saphronia will never forget that at Veneering's she first saw him. They spoke of it soon after they were married and agreed that they would never forget it. In fact, to Veneering, they owe their union. They hoped to show their sense of this someday. "No, no," from Veneering, "Oh, yes, yes. I'll let him rely upon it. They will, if they can." His marriage with Saphronia was not a marriage of interest on either side. She had her little fortune. He had his little fortune. They joined their little fortunes. It was a marriage of pure inclination and suitability. Thank you. Saphronia and he are fond of the society of young people, but he is not sure that their house would be a good house for young people proposing to remain single since the contemplation of its domestic bliss might induce them to change their minds. He will not apply this to any one present, certainly not, to their darling little Georgiana. Again, thank you. Neither, by the by, will he apply it to his friend, Fledgeby. He thanks Veneering for the feeling manner in which he referred to their common friend, Fledgeby, for he holds that gentleman in the highest estimation. Thank you. In fact, returning unexpectedly to Fledgeby, the better you know him, the more you find in him that you desire to know. Again, thank you. In his dear Saphronia's name, and in his own, thank you. Mrs. Lamel has set quite still, with her eyes cast down upon the tablecloth. As Mr. Lamel's address ends, Tremelow once more turns to her involuntarily, not cured yet of that often recurring impression that she is going to speak to him. This time, she really is going to speak to him. When hearing us talking with this other next neighbour, and she speaks in a low voice, Mr. Tremelow. He answers, "I beg your pardon, no, yes." Still a little doubtful because of her not looking at him. "You have the soul of a gentleman, and I know I may trust you. Will you will give me the opportunity of saying a few words to you when you come upstairs?" "Oh, surely I shall be honoured. Don't seem to do so, if you please, and don't think it inconsistent if my manner should be more careless than my words. I may be watched." Intensely astonished, Tremelow puts his hand to his forehead, and sticks back in his chair, meditating. Mrs. Lamel rises. All rise. The ladies go upstairs. The gentleman soon saunter after them. Fudgeby has devoted the interval to taking observation of Bootz Whiskers, Brewer's Whiskers, and Lamel's Whiskers, and considering which pattern of Whisker he would prefer to produce out of himself by friction, if the genie of the cheek would only answer to his rubbing. In the drawing-room, groups form as usual, light wood, boots, and brewer, flutter-like moths around that yellow wax candle, guttering down, and with some hint of a winding sheet in it, Lady Tippens. Outsiders cultivate veneering MP, and Mrs. Veneering WMP. Lamel stands with folded arms, methystothelion, in a corner, with Georgiana and Fudgeby. Mrs. Lamel, on a sofa by a table, invites Mr. Tremelow's attention to a book of portraits in her hand. Mr. Tremelow takes his station on a set E before her, and Mrs. Lamel shows him a portrait. "You have reason to be surprised," she says softly, "but I wish you wouldn't look so." Disturbed Tremelow, making an effort not to look so, looks much more so. "I think, Mr. Tremelow, you never saw that distant connection of yours before today?" "No, never. Now that you do see him, you see what he is. You are not proud of him." "To see the truth, Mrs. Lamel?" knew. If you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to acknowledge him. "Here is another portrait. What do you think of it?" Tremelow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud, "Very like, uncommonly like." "You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours with his attention. You notice where he is now, and how engaged?" "Yes, but Mr. Lamel," she darts a look at him which he cannot comprehend, and shows him another portrait. "Very good, is it not?" "It charming," says Tremelow, "so like, as to be almost a caricature." "Mr. Tremelow, it is impossible to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been before I could bring myself to speak to you as I do now. It is only in the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me that I can proceed." "Sincerely, promise me that you never will betray my confidence, that you will respect it even though you may no longer respect me, and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn it." "Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman, thank you. I can desire no more." "Mr. Tremelow, I implore you to save that child." "That child, Georgiana, she will be sacrificed. She will be inviegled and married to that connection of yours. It is a part in a ship affair, a money speculation. She has no strength of will or character to help herself, and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for life." "Amazing, but what can I do to prevent it?" demands Tremelow shocked and bewildered to the last degree. "Here is another portrait, and not good, is it?" Aghast, at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it critically, Tremelow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his own head back and does so, though he no more sees the portrait than if it were in China. "Decidedly, not good," says Mrs. Lamel, stiff and exaggerated. "And ex, but Tremelow, in his demolished state, can it command the word and trails off into..." "That is so, Mr. Tremelow. Your word will have wait with her pompous self-blinded father. You know how much he makes of your family, lose no time, warn him, but warn him against whom?" "Against me." By great good fortune, Tremelow received a stimulant at this critical instant. The stimulant, Islamelow's voice. "Sivronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing to Imlo?" "Public characters, Alfred?" "Shame the last of me." "Yes, Alfred." She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and presents the portrait to Tremelow. "That is the last of Mr. Lamel. Do you think it good?" "Worn her father against me. I deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first. It is my husband's scheme, your connections and mine. I tell you, there's so many to show you the necessity of the poor little foolish affectionate creatures being befriended and rescued. You will not repeat this to her father. You will spare me so far, and spare my husband, for, though this celebration of today is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we must live." "Do you think it like?" Tremelow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his hand with the original looking towards him from his methystophily in corner. "Very, well, indeed are at length the words which Tremelow with great difficulty extracts from himself." "I am glad, you think so. On the whole, I myself consider to the best. The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr. Lamel. But I don't understand. I don't see my way." Tremelow stammers, as he falters over the book with his glass at his eye, "How, warn her father, not tell him. Tell him how much, tell him how little I am getting lost. Tell him I am a matchmaker. Tell him I am an artful and designing woman. Tell him you are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my company. Tell him any such things of me. They will all be true. You know what a puffed-up man he is, and how easily you can cause his vanity to take the alarm. Tell him as much as we'll give him the alarm and make him careful of her, and spare me the rest." "Mr. Tremelow, I feel my sudden degradation in your eyes. Familiar as I am with my degradation in my own eyes, I keenly feel the change that must have come upon me in yours in these last few moments. But I trust to your good faith with me as implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to speak to you today, you would almost pity me. I want no new promise from you on my own account, for I am satisfied, and I all shall be satisfied with the promise you have given me. I can venture to say no more, for I see that I am watched. If you would set my mind at rest with the assurance that you will interpose with the father and save this harmless girl, close that book before you return it to me, and I shall know what you mean, and deeply thank you in my heart." Alfred, Mr. Tremelow, thinks the last one the best, and quite agrees with you and me. Alfred advances, the groups break up, Lady Tippen's rises to go, and Mrs. Veneering follows her leader. For the moment Mrs. Lamald does not turn to them, but remains looking at Tremelow, looking at Alfred's portrait through his eyeglass. The moment passed, Tremelow drops his eyeglass at his ribbon's length, rises and closes the book with an emphasis which makes the fragile knursling of the fairy's Tippen's start. Then, goodbye and goodbye and charming occasion worthy of the Golden Age, and more about the flitch of Bacon and the like of that, and Tremelow goes staggering across Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead, and as nearly ran down by a flushed letter-cart, and at last drops safe in his easy chair, innocent good gentlemen, with his hand to his forehead still, and his head in a whirl. End of Book II Chapter 16 Chapter 1 Lodgers in Queer Street It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking wheezing and choking. In Animate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being holy neither. Gaslights flared in the shops of the haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun, while the sun itself, when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country, it was a foggy day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was, at about the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown, and then browner, and then browner, until at the heart of the city, which call St Mary Axe, it was rusty black. From any point of the high ridge of land northward it might have been discerned that the loftiest buildings made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea, and especially at the great dome of St. Paul's, seemed to die hard, but this was not perceivable in the streets at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a heap of vapour charged with muffled sound of wheels and unfolding a gigantic guitar. At nine o'clock, on such a morning, the place of business of pubsy and coe, was not the liveliest object even in St Mary Axe, which is not a very lively spot, with a sobbing gaslight in the counting-house window, and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in to strangle it through the keyhole of the main door. But the light went out, and the main door opened, and Raya came forth with a bag under his arm. Almost in the act of coming out of the door, Raya went into the fog, and was lost to the eyes of St Mary Axe. But the eyes of this history can follow him westward, by Cornhill, Cheapside, Fleet Street, and the Strand, to Piccadilly, and the Albany. The other he went at his grave and measured pace, staff in hand, skirted heel, and more than one head, turning to look back at his venerable figure, already lost in the mist, supposed it to be some ordinary figure, indistinctly seen, which fancy in the fog, had worked into that passing likeness. Arrived at the house in which his master's chambers were on the second floor, Raya proceeded up the stairs, and paused at Fascination Fledgeby's door. Making free with neither Bell nor Nocker, he struck upon the door with the top of his staff, and, having listened, sat down on the threshold. It was characteristic of his habitual submission, that he sat down on the raw, dark staircase, as many of his ancestors had probably sat down in dungeons, taking what befell him as it might befall. After time, when he had grown so cold as to be feigned to blow upon his fingers, he arose and knocked with his staff again, and listened again, and again sat down to wait. Thrice, he repeated these actions before his listening ears, were greeted by the voice of Fledgeby, calling from his bed, "Hold your row! I'll come and open a door directly!" But in lieu of coming directly, he fell into a sweet sleep for some quarter of an hour more, during which added interval Raya sat upon the stairs and waited, with perfect patience. At length the door stood open, and Mr. Fledgeby's retreating drapery plunged into bed again, following it at a respectful distance, Raya passed into the bed chamber, where a fire had been sometime lighted, and was burning briskly. "Why, what time at night do you mean to call it?" inquired Fledgeby, turning away beneath the clothes, and presenting a comfortable rampart of shoulder to the chilled figure of the old man. "Sir, it is full half past ten in the morning." "That juice it is, and it must be precious foggy." "Very foggy, sir." "And raw, then?" "Chill, and bitter," said Raya, drawing out a handkerchief and wiping the moisture from his beard and long gray hair, as he stood on the verge of the rug with his eyes on the acceptable fire. With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh. "Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?" he asked. "No, sir, no, not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty clean." "You needn't brag about it," returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his desire to heighten the contrast between his beard and the streets. "But you're always bragging about something. Got the books there?" "They are here, sir." "All right. I'll turn the general subject over in my mind for a minute or two, and while I'm about it, you can empty your bag and get ready for me." With another comfortable plunge, Mr. Fledgeby fell asleep again. The old man, having obeyed his directions, sat down on the edge of a chair and, folding his hands before him, gradually yielded to the influence of the warmth undosed. He was roused by Mr. Fledgeby's appearing erect at the foot of the bed in Turkish slippers, rose-coloured Turkish trousers, got cheap from somebody who had cheated some other somebody out of them, and a gown and cap to correspond. In that costume he would have left nothing to be desired, if he had been further fitted out with a bottomless chair, a lantern, and a bunch of matches. "Now, olden," cried Fassination, "is light railway. What dodgery are you up to next, sitting there with your eyes shut? You ain't asleep. Catch a weasel at it and catch a Jew." "Truly, sir, I fear I nodded," said the old man, "not you," returned Fledgeby with a cunning look, and, telling Moo with a good many, I dare say, but it won't put me off my guard. Not a bad notion, though, if you want to look indifferent in driving a bargain. Oh, you are a dodger." The old man shook his head, gently repudiating the imputation, and suppressed a sigh, and moved to the table at which Mr. Fledgeby was now pouring out for himself a cup of steaming and fragrant coffee from a pot that had stood ready on the hob. It was an edifying spectacle. The young man in his easy chair taking his coffee, and the old man with his gray head bent, standing awaiting his pleasure. "Now," said Fledgeby, "fork out your balance in hand, and prove by figures how you make it out that it ain't more. First of all, like that candle." Riah obeyed, and then taking a bag from his breast, and referring to the sum in the accounts for which they made him responsible, told it out upon the table. Fledgeby told it again with great care and rang every sovereign. "I suppose," he said, taking one up to eye closely, "you haven't been lightning any of these, but it's a trade of your peoples, you know? You understand what sweating a pound means, don't you?" "Much as you do, sir," returned the old man with his hands under opposite cuffs of his loose sleeves, as he stood at the table, deferentially observant of the master's face. "May I take the liberty to say something?" "You may," Fledgeby graciously conceded. "Do you not, sir, without intending it, of assurity, without intending it, sometimes mingle the character I fairly earn in your employment, with the character which it is your policy that I should bear?" "I don't find it worth my while to cap things so fine as to go into the inquiry," Fascination coolly answered. "Not in justice?" "Bava, justice," said Fledgeby. "Not in generosity, use and generosity," said Fledgeby, "and that's a good connection. Bring out your vouchers and don't talk Jerusalem, Pallava." The vouchers were produced, and for the next half hour, Mr. Fledgeby concentrated his sublime attention on them. They and the accounts were all found correct, and the books and the papers resumed their places in the bag. "Next," said Fledgeby, "concerning that bill-broken branch of the business, the branch I like best. What queer bills are to be bought, and at what prices? You have got your list of what's in the market?" "Sir, a long list," replied Riah, taking out a pocket-book, and selecting from its contents a folded paper, which, being unfolded, became a sheet of full-scap covered with close writing. "Hooo!" whistled Fledgeby, as he took it in his hand. "Queer Street is full of larger as just at present. These are to be disposed of in parcels, are they?" "In parcels has set forth," returned the old man, looking over his master's shoulder, or the lump. "Half the lump will be waste paper," one knows beforehand," said Fledgeby. "Can you get it at waste paper price?" "That's the question," Riah shook his head, and Fledgeby cast his small eyes down the list. They presently began to twinkle, and he knew sooner became conscious of their twinkling than he looked up over his shoulder at the grave face above him, and moved to the chimney-piece. Making a desk of it, he stood there with his back to the old man, warming his knees, perusing the list at his leisure, and often returning to some lines of it, as though they were particularly interesting. At those times he glanced in the chimney glass to see what note the old man took of him. He took none that could be detected, but aware of his employer's suspicions stood with his eyes on the ground. Mr. Fledgeby was thus amiably engaged when a step was heard at the outer door, and the door was heard to open hastily. "Hark! That's your doing you, pump of Israel," said Fledgeby. "You can't have shut it!" Then the step was heard within, and the voice of Mr. Alfred Lemmel, called aloud, "Are you anywhere here, Fledgeby?" To which Fledgeby, after cautioning Riah in a low voice to take his cue, as it should be given him, replied, "Here I am," and opened his bedroom door. "Come in," said Fledgeby. "This gentleman is only pubzy and coe of St Mary Axe, that I am trying to make terms of an unfortunate friend with in a manner of some dishonored bills. But really, pubzy and coe are so strict with their debtors, and so hard to move that I seem to be wasting my time. Can't I make any terms with you on my friend's part, Mr. Riah?" "I am but the representative of another, sir," returned the Jew in a low voice. "I do as I am bitten by my principle. It is not my capital that is invested in the business. It is not my profit that arises there from." laughed Fledgeby. "Lemmel?" laughed Lemmel. "Yes, of course, we know." "Devilish good, ain't it, Lemmel?" said Fledgeby, unspeakably amused by his hidden joke. "Always the same, always the same," said Lemmel. "Mr. Riah, pubzy and coe, St Mary Axe," Fledgeby put in as he wiped away the tears that took off from his eyes, so Riah was his enjoyment of his secret joke. "Mr. Riah is bound to observe the invariable forms for such cases made and provided," said Lemmel. "He is only the representative of another," cried Fledgeby, does as he is told by his principle. "Not his capital that is invested in the business." "Oh, that's good." Mr. Lemmel joined in the laugh and looked knowing, and the more he did both, the more exquisite the secret joke became for Mr. Fledgeby. "However," said that fascinating gentleman, wiping his eyes again, "if we go on in this way we shall seem to be almost making game, Mr. Riah, or of pubzy and coe, St Mary Axe, or of somebody which is far from our intention. Mr. Riah, if you would have the kindness to step into the next room for a few moments when I speak with Mr. Lemmel here, I should like to try to make terms with you once again before you go." The old man, who had never raised his eyes during the whole transaction of Mr. Fledgeby's joke, silently bowed and passed out by the door which Fledgeby opened for him. Having closed it on him, Fledgeby returned to Lemmel, standing with his back to the bedroom fire, with one hand under his coat skirts and all his whiskers in the other. "Hello?" said Fledgeby. "There's something wrong." "How do you know it?" demanded Lemmel. "Because you show it," replied Fledgeby in unintentional rhyme. "Well then, there is," said Lemmel. "There is something wrong, the whole thing's wrong." "I say!" remonstrated fascination very slowly and sitting down with his hands on his knees to stay at his glowering friend with his back to the fire. "I tell you, Fledgeby," repeated Lemmel with a sweep of his right arm. "The whole thing's wrong. The game's up." "What? Games up?" demanded Fledgeby as slowly as before and more sternly. "The game." "Our game?" read that. Fledgeby took a note from his extended hand and read it aloud. Alfred Lemmel, a squire, "Allow Mrs. Pottsnap and myself to express our united sense of the polite attentions of Mrs. Alfred Lemmel and yourself towards our daughter, Georgiana. Allow us also wholly to reject them for the future and to communicate our final desire that the two families may become entire strangers. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, John Pottsnap." Fledgeby looked at the three blank sides of this note quite as long and earnestly as at the first expressive side, and then looked at Lemmel, who responded with another extensive sweep of his right arm. "Who's doing is this?" said Fledgeby. "Impossible to imagine," said Lemmel. "Perhaps," suggested Fledgeby, after reflecting with a very discontented brow, "somebody has been giving you a bad character." "Or you," said Lemmel with a deeper frown. Mr. Fledgeby appeared to be on the verge of some mutinous expressions, when his hand happened to touch his nose. A certain remembrance connected with that feature operating as a timely warning, he took thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger, and pondered. Lemmel, meanwhile eyeing him with furtive eyes. "Well," said Fledgeby. "This won't improve with talking about." "Every other findout who did it will mark that person. There's nothing more to be said, except that you undertook to do what circumstances prevent you doing; and that you undertook to do what you might have done by this time, if you had made a prompt a use of circumstances," snarled Lemmel. "Ha, that," remarked Fledgeby with his hands on the Turkish trousers, "is a matter of opinion." "Mr. Fledgeby," said Lemmel, in a bullying tone, "am I to understand that you in any way reflect upon me or hint to satisfaction with me in this affair?" "No," said Fledgeby, "brimided you have brought my promissory note in your pocket, and now hand it over." Lemmel produced it, not without reluctance. Fledgeby looked at it, identified it, twisted it up, and threw it into the fire. They both looked at it as it blazed, went out, and flew in feathery ash up the chimney. "Now, Mr. Fledgeby," said Lemmel as before, "I might have understand that you in any way reflect upon me or hint to satisfaction with me in this affair." "No," said Fledgeby, "finally and unreservedly no." "Yes," Fledgeby, my hand, Mr. Fledgeby took it to sing, "and if we ever find out who did this, we'll mark that person. And in the most friendly manner, let me mention one thing more. I don't know what your circumstances are, and I don't ask. You have sustained a loss here. Many men are liable to be involved at times, and you may be, or you may not be. But whatever you do, Lemmel, don't, don't, don't, I beg of you, ever fall into the hands of PUBZY and COE in the next room, for they are grinders. Regular flares and grinders, my dear Lemmel." Repeated Fledgeby, with the peculiar relish, "and they'll skin you by the inch, the nape of your neck to the sole of your feet, and grind every inch of your skin to tooth powder. You have seen what Mr. Ryer is. Never fall into his hands, Lemmel. I beg of you as a friend." Mr. Lemmel, disclosing some alarm with the solemnity of this affectionate actuation, demanded by the devil he should ever fall into the hands of PUBZY and COE? "To confess the fact, I was made a little uneasy," said the candid Fledgeby, "by the manner in which that too looked at you, when he heard your name. I didn't like his eye. But it may have been the heated fancy of a friend. Of course, if you are sure that you have no personal security out which you may not be quite equal to meeting, and which can have got into his hands, it must have been fancy. Still, I didn't like his eye." The brooding Lemmel, with certain white dints coming and going in his palpitating nose, looked as if some tormenting imp were pinching it. Fledgeby, watching him with a twitch in his mean face which did duty there for a smile, looked very like the tormentor who was pinching. "But I mustn't keep him waiting too long," said Fledgeby, "are he'll revenge it on my unfortunate friend. How's your very clever and agreeable wife?" She knows we are broken down. "I showed her the letter." "Very much surprised," asked Fledgeby. "I think she would have been more so," answered Lemmel, "if there had been more go in you." "Oh, she lays it upon me then." "Mr. Fledgeby, I will not have my words misconstrued." "Don't break out, Lemmel," urged Fledgeby in a submissive tone, "because there's no occasion. I only ask a question, then she don't lay it upon me." "To ask another question?" "No, sir." "Very good," said Fledgeby, plainly seeing that she did. "My compliments to her, and goodbye." There shook hands, and Lemmel stowed out pondering. Fledgeby saw him into the fog, and, returning to the fire and musing with his face to it, stretched the legs of the rose-coloured Turkish trousers wide apart and meditatively bent his knees as if he were going down upon them. "You have a pair of whiskers, Lemmel, which I never liked," murmured Fledgeby, "and which money can't produce. You are boastful of your manners and your conversation. You wanted to pull my nose, and you have let me in for a failure, and your wife says I am the cause of it. I'll bow you down. I will, though I have no whiskers. Here he rubbed the places where they would do, and no manners, and no conversation." Having thus relieved his noble mind, he collected the legs of the Turkish trousers, straightened himself on his knees, and called out to Raya in the next room. "Hello, you, sir." At sight of the old man, reentering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the character he had given him. Mr. Fledgeby was so tickled again that he exclaimed laughing, "Good, good! Upon my soul it is uncommon, good. Now, olden," preceded Fledgeby when he had had his laugh out, "you'll buy up these lots that I mark with my pencil. There's a tick there, and a tick there, and a tick there. And I wage at Tubman's. You'll afterwards go on squeezing those Christians like the Jew you are. Now, next you'll want a check. I'll say you want it, though you've capital enough somewhere, if one only knew where, but you'd be peppered and salted and grilled on a grid-eye, and before you'd own to it, and that check I'll write." When he had unlocked a draw and taken a key from it to open another draw, in which was another key, that opened another draw, in which was another key, that opened another draw, in which was the checkbook. And when he had written the check, and when reversing the key and draw process, he had placed his checkbook in safety again, he beckoned the old man with the folded check to come and take it. "Olden," said Fledgeby, when the Jew had put it in his pocketbook, and was putting that on the breast of his outer garment, "so much at present for my affairs. Now, a word about affairs that are not exactly mine. Where is she?" With his hand not yet withdrawn from the breast of his garment, Riah started and paused. "A-ho!" said Fledgeby, didn't expect it. "Where have you hidden her?" Showing that he was taken by surprise, the old man looked at his master with some passing confusion, which the master highly enjoyed. "Is she in the house I pay rent in Texas for in St. Mary Axe?" demanded Fledgeby. "No, sir. Is she in your garden up at top of that house? Gonna have to be dead or whatever the game is?" asked Fledgeby. "No, sir. Where is she then?" Riah bent his eyes upon the ground, as if considering whether he could answer the question without breach of faith, and then silently raised them to Fledgeby's face, as if he could not. "Come," said Fledgeby, "I won't press that just now, but I want to know this, and I will know this, mind you. What are you up to?" The old man, with an apologetic action of his head and hands, as not comprehending the master's meaning, addressed to him a look of mute inquiry. "You can't be a gala-vanting dodger," said Fledgeby, "for you are a regular pity the sorrows, you know. If you do know any Christian rhyme, whose trembling limbs are born him too, etc., you're one of the patriarchs. You're a shaky old card, and you can't be in love with this lizzy." "Oh, sir," expostulated Riah, "oh, sir, sir, sir." "Then why?" retorted Fledgeby, with some slight tinge of a blush. "Don't you out with your reason by having your spoon in the super-dole?" "Sir, I will tell you the truth, but your pardon for the stipulation, it is in sacred confidence, it is strictly upon honour." "Honour, too," cried Fledgeby with a mocking lip, "honour among Jews." "Well, cut away." "It is upon honour, sir," the other still stipulated with respectful firmness. "Oh, certainly honour bright," said Fledgeby. The old man, never bitten to sit down, stood with an earnest hand laid on the back of the young man's easy chair. The young man sat looking at the fire with a face of listening curiosity, ready to check him off and catch him tripping. "Cut away," said Fledgeby, "start with your motive." "Sir, I have no motive but to help the helpless." Mr. Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this incredible statement gave Riah's and his breast by a prodigiously long, derisive sniff. "How I came to know and much to esteem and to respect this damsel, I mentioned when you saw her in my poor garden on the house-top," said the Jew. "Did you?" said Fledgeby distrustfully. "Well, perhaps you did, though." The better I knew her, the more interest I felt in her fortunes. They gathered to a crisis. I found her beset by a selfish and ungrateful brother, beset by an unacceptable war, beset by the snares of a more powerful lover, beset by the wiles of her own heart. She took to one of the champs, then. "Sir, it was only natural that you should incline towards him, for he had many and great advantages. But he was not of her station, and to marry her was not in his mind. Perils were closing round her, and the circle was fast darkening, when I, being as you have said, sir, too old and broken to be suspected of any feeling for her but her father's, stepped in and counseled flight. I said, 'My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.' She answered, she had had this in her thoughts, but with her to fly without help, she knew not, and there were none to help her. I showed her there was one to help her, and it was I, and she is gone. "What did you do with her?" asked Fledgeby, feeling his cheek. "I placed her," said the old man, at a distance, with a grave smooth outward sweep from one another of his two open hands at arm's length. At a distance among certain of our people, where her industry would serve her and where she could hope to exercise it, unassailed from any quarter. Fledgeby's eyes had come from the fire to notice the action of his hands when he said, at a distance. Fledgeby now tried, very unsuccessfully, to imitate that action as she shook his head and said, "Placed her in that direction, did you?" "Oh, you circular old Dodger." With one hand across his breast, and the other on the easy chair, Riah, without justifying himself, waited for further questioning. But that it was hopeless to question him on that one reserved point. Fledgeby, with his small eyes too near together, saw full well. "Lizzy," said Fledgeby, looking at the fire again, and then looking up. "Hmmm, Lizzy." "You didn't tell me the other name in your garden, at top of the house?" "I'll be more communicative with you." "The other name's Hexum." Riah bent his head in a scent. "Look here, you sir," said Fledgeby. "I have a notion, I know something of the inveigling jap, the powerful one. Has he anything to do with the law?" "Nominally, I believe it is his calling." "I thought so. Name anything like Lightwood?" "Sir, not at all like." "Come, Alden," said Fledgeby, meeting his eyes with a wink. "Say a name!" "Rayburn." "My Jupiter," cried Fledgeby. "That one, is it?" "I thought it might be the other, but I never dreamed of that one." "I shouldn't object to your barking eye of the pair, Dodger. They're both conceited enough, but that one is a cool customer, as ever I met with. Gotta beard besides and presumes upon it." "Well done, Alden. Go on, and prosper." Brightened by this unexpected commendation, Riah asked, "Were there more instructions for him?" "No," said Fledgeby. "You may toddle now, Judah, and grope about on the orders you have got." Dismissed, with those pleasing words, the old man took his broad hat and staff, and left the great oppressance. More as if he were some superior creature, benignly blessing Mr. Fledgeby, and the poor, dependent on whom he set his foot. Left alone Mr. Fledgeby locked his outer door and came back to his fire. "Well done you," said Fassination to himself. "Slow you, maybe, sure you are." This he twice authorized repeated, with much complacency, as he again dispersed the legs of the Turkish trousers and bent the knees. "A tidy shot, that I flatter myself." He then severely quiesed, and Jew brought down with it. Now, when I heard the story told at Lemmalls, I didn't make a jump at Riah, not ahead of it. I got at him by degrees. Herein he was quite accurate, at being his habit not to jump or leap, or make an upward spring at anything in life, but to crawl at everything. "I got at him," pursued Fledgeby, feeling for his whiskers. "My degrees, if your Lemmalls or your light words had got at him anyhow, they would have asked him the question whether he hadn't something to do with that gal's disappearance. I knew a better way of going to work, having got behind the hedge, and put him in the light. I took a shot at him and brought him down, plump. "Ah, I don't count for much being a Jew and a match against me." Another dry twist in place of a smile made his face crooked here. "As two Christians," proceeded Fledgeby, "look out, fellow Christians, particularly you that large in Queer Street. I have got the run of Queer Street now, and you shall see some games there. So work a lot of power of you, and you not know it, knowing as you think yourselves would be almost worth laying out money upon. But when it comes to squeezing a profit out of you into the bargain, it's something like." With this apostrophe, Mr. Fledgeby appropriately proceeded to divest himself of his Turkish garments and invest himself with Christian attire. Pending which operation, and his mourning ablutions, and his anointing of himself, with the last infallible preparation for the production of luxuriant and glossy hair upon the human countenance, quacks being the only sages he believed in beside usurers. The murky fog closed about him and shut him up in its suity embrace. If it had never let him out any more, the world would have had no irreparable loss, but could have easily replaced him from its stock on hand. End of Book III, Chapter I. Chapter II. A respected friend in a new aspect. In the evening of this same foggy day, when the yellow window blind of pubzy and coe was drawn down upon the day's work, Raya the Jew once more came forth into St. Mary X. But this time he carried no bag, and was not bound on his master's affairs. He passed over London Bridge and returned to the Middlesex shore by that of Westminster, and so ever wading through the fog waded to the doorstep of the doll's dressmaker. Miss Ren expected him. He could see her through the window by the light of her low fire, carefully banked up with damp cinders that it might last the longer, and waste the less when she was out, sitting waiting for him in her bonnet. His tap at the glass roused her from the musing solitude in which she sat, and she came to the door to open it, aiding her steps with a little crutch stick. "Good evening, Godmother," said Miss Jenny Ren. The old man laughed, and gave her his arm to lean on. "Would you come in and warn yourself, Godmother?" asked Miss Jenny Ren. "Not if you are ready, Cinderella, my dear." "Well," exclaimed Miss Ren delighted, "No, you are a clever old boy. If we gave prizes of this establishment, but we only keep blanks, you should have the first silver medal for taking me up so quick." Now she spake thus, Miss Ren removed the key of the house door from the keyhole, and put it in her pocket, and then bustlingly closed the door and tried it as they boasted on the step. Satisfied that her dwelling was safe, she drew one hand to the old man's arm, and prepared to ply her crutch stick with the other. But the key was an instrument of such gigantic proportions, that before they started, Rya proposed to carry it. "No, no, no, no. I carry it myself," returned Miss Ren. "I'm awfully lopsided, you know, and still, down in my pocket, it will trim the ship. To let you into a secret, Godmother, I wear my pocket on my high side, a purpose." With that they began their plodding through the fog. "Yes, it was truly sharp of you, Godmother," resumed Miss Ren with great approbation, "to understand me. But you see, you are so like the very Godmother in the bright little books. You look so unlike the rest of people, and so much as if you had changed yourself into that sheep, just this moment, with some benevolent object." "Boh," cried Miss Jenny, putting her face close to the old man, "I can see you features, Godmother, behind the beard." "Does the fancy go to my changing other objects too, Jenny?" "Ah, that it does. If you'd only borrow my stick and take this piece of pavement, this dirty stone that my foot taps, it would start up a coach and six. I say, let's believe it so." "With all my heart," replied the good old man, "and I'll tell you what I must ask you to do, Godmother. I must ask you to be so kind, as give my child a tap, and change him all together. Oh, my child has been such a bad, bad child of late. It worries me lily out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days, has had the horrors too, and fancy that four cup of coloured men in red wanted to throw him into a fiery furnace." "But that's dangerous, Jenny." "Dangerous, Godmother. My child is always dangerous more or less. He might." Hear the little creature glance back over her shoulder at the sky. "Be set in the house on fire at this present moment. I don't know who would have a child for my part. Is thou you shaking him? I've shaken him till I've made myself kitty." "Why don't you mind your commandments and only your parents, your whatty old boy?" I said to him all the time, but he only whimpered and stared at me. "What shall be changed after him?" asked Riah in a compassionately playful voice. "Upon thy word, Godmother. I'm afraid I must be selfish next, and get you to set me right in the back in the legs. It's a little thing to you, with your power, Godmother, but it's a great deal to pour a weak aik in me." There was no perilous complaining in the words, but they were not the less touching for that. "And then?" "Yes, and then you know, Godmother. We'll both jump up into the coach in six and go to Lissy. This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be, having been brought up by the fairies, and you can tell me this. Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?" "Explain, Goddaughter." "I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lissy now than I used to feel before I knew her." Tears were in her eyes, as she said so. "Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear," said the Jew. "That of a wife and a fair daughter and a son of promise has faded out of my own life. But the happiness was." Said Miss Wren, thoughtfully, by no means convinced, and chopping the exclamation with that sharp little hatchet of hers. "Then, I tell you what a change I think you'd better begin with, Godmother. You had better change is into was, and was into is, and keep him so." "Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain, then?" asked the old man tenderly. "Right," exclaimed Miss Wren with another chop. "You have changed me. Why is it, Godmother? Not." She added with the quaint hitch of her chin and eyes, "That you need to be a very wonderful Godmother to do that, deed." Thus conversing, and having crossed Westminster Bridge, they traversed the ground that Reyer had lately traversed, and knew ground likewise. For when they had retrossed the Thames by way of London Bridge, they struck down by the river, and held their still foggier course that way. But previously, as they were going along, Jenny twisted her venerable friend aside to a brilliantly lighted toy shop window, and said, "Now, look at him! All my work!" This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colours of the rainbow, who addressed representation at court for going to balls, for going out driving, for going out on horseback, for going out walking, for going to get married, for going to help other dolls to get married, for all the gay events of life. "Pretty, pretty, pretty," said the old man with a clap of his hands, "most elegant taste." "Plaid, you like him?" returned Miss Ren loftily. "But the funny is, Godmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it's the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back were not bad in my legs queer." He looked at her as not understanding what she said. "Bless you, Godmother!" said Miss Ren. "I have to scud about town at all hours." "If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be compellingly easy work. But it's the trying on by the great ladies that takes it out of me." "How the trying on?" asked Ryan. "What a moony, Godmother you were, after all!" returned Miss Ren. "Look here. There's a drawing room, or a grand day in the park, or a show, or a photo, or what you like. Very well." "I'll squeeze upon the crowd, and look about me. When I see a great lady, very suitable for my business, I say, 'You do, my dear.' And I take particular notice of her, and run home, and cut her out, and paste her. Then another day, I come studying back again to try on, and then I take particular notice of her again. Sometimes she plainly seems to say how that little creature is staring, and sometimes likes it, and sometimes don't, but much more often, yes, than no. All the time I'm only saying to myself, 'I must hollow out a bit here, I'm a slope away there, and I'm making a perfect slave of her, with making her try on my door's dress. Evening parties are severe at work for me, because it's only a doorway for a full view. And what, with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages, and the legs of the oarsies, are fully expect to be run over some night. However, there I have him, just the same. When they go bobbing into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman's cape in the rain, I dare say they think I am wondering and admiring, with all my eyes and heart, but they don't think they're only working for my dolls. There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. I made her do double duty in one night. I said, when she came out of the carriage, you do, my dear, and I ran straight home and cut her out and pasted her. Back I came again and waited behind the men that called the carriages. Very bad night, too. At last, Lady Belinda Whitrose's carriage. Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down, and I made her try on. Oh, and taint pains about it, too, before she got seated. That's Lady Belinda, hanging up by the waist, much too near the gaslight for a wax wrong with her toes turned in. When they had plotted on for some time, neither river, Ria asked the way to a certain tavern called the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. Following the directions he received, they arrived after two or three puzzled stoppages for consideration, and some uncertain looking about them at the door of Miss Abby Poterson's dominions. A peep through the glass portion of the door revealed to them the glories of the bar, and Miss Abby herself seated in state on her snug throne, reading the newspaper, to whom, with deference, they presented themselves. Taking her eyes off her newspaper and pausing with a suspended expression of countenance as if she must finish the paragraph in hand before undertaking any other business, whatever, Miss Abby demanded with some slight disparity. Now then, what's for you? "Could we see Miss Poterson?" asked the old man, uncovering his head. "You not only could, but you can, and you do," replied the hostess, "might we speak with you, madam?" By this time Miss Abby's eyes had possessed themselves of the small figure of Miss Jenny Wren, for the closer observation of which Miss Abby laid aside her newspaper, rose, and looked over the half-door of the bar. The crutch stick seemed to entreat for its owner, leave to come in and rest by the fire. So Miss Abby opened the half-door and said, as though replying to the crutch stick, "Yes, come in and rest by the fire." "My name is Riah," said the old man with courteous action, "and my evocation is in London City. This my young companion." "Stop a bit!" into post, Miss Wren. "I'll give the lady my card!" she produced it on her pocket with an air after struggling with the gigantic door key which had got upon the top of it and kept it down. Miss Abby, with manifest tokens of astonishment, took the diminutive document and found it to run concisely thus. Miss Jenny Wren, doll's dressmaker, dolls attended at their own residence. "Lud!" exclaimed Miss Poterson, staring, and dropped the card. "We take the liberty of coming. My young companion and I, Madam," said Riah, "on behalf of Lizzy Hexham." Miss Poterson was stooping to loosen the bonnet strings of the doll's dressmaker. She looked round rather angrily and said, "Lizzy Hexham, is a very proud young woman." "She would be so proud," returned Riah dextrously, "to stand well in your good opinion that before she quitted London for where, in the name of the Cape of Good-Obe," asked Miss Poterson, as though supposing her to have emigrated, "for the country was the cautious answer. She made us promise to come and show you a paper which she left in our hands of that special purpose. I am an unserviceable friend of hers who began to know her after her departure from this neighbourhood. She has been, for some time, living with my young companion, and has been a helpful and a comfortable friend to her. Much needed, Madam," he added in a lower voice, "believe me if you knew all, much needed." "I can believe that," said Miss Abbey, with a softening glance at the little creature. "And if it's proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts," Miss Jenny stuck in flushed, "she is proud. And if it's not, she is not." Her set purpose of contradicting Miss Abbey point blank, was so far from offending that dread authority as to elicit a gracious smile. "You do right, child," said Miss Abbey, "to speak well of those who deserve well of you." "Right or wrong," muttered Miss Ren, inaudibly, with a visible hitch of her chin. "I mean to do it, and you may make up your mind to that, old lady." "Here is the paper, Madam," said the Jew, delivering into Miss Poterson's hands, the original document drawn up by Rokesmith and signed by Riderhood. "Will you please read it?" "But first of all," said Miss Abbey, "did you ever taste shrub, child?" Miss Ren shook her head. "Should you like to?" "Should, if it's good," returned Miss Ren. "You should try, and if you find it good, I'll mix some for you with hot water, put your poor little feet on the fender, to cold night and the fog clings so." As Miss Abbey helped her to turn her chair, her loosened bonnet dropped on the floor. "Why, what lovely hair!" cried Miss Abbey. "And enough to make wigs for all the dolls in the world. What a quantity!" "Call that a quantity," returned Miss Ren. "Poof! What do you say to the rest of it?" As she spoke, she untied a band, and the golden stream fell over herself and over the chair, and flowed down to the ground. Miss Abbey's admiration seemed to increase her perplexity. She beckoned the dew to warn her as she reached down the shrub bottle from its niche and whispered, "Child or woman?" "Child in years," was the answer, "woman in self-reliance and trial." "You are talking about me a good people," thought Miss Jenny, sitting in her golden bow, warming her feet. "I can't hear what you say, but I know your tricks and your manners." The shrub, when tasted from a spoon, perfectly harmonizing with Miss Jenny's palette, a judicious amount was mixed by Miss Poterson's skillful hands, where our vrier, Tuu Potuk. After this preliminary, Miss Abbey read the document, and, as often as she raised her eyebrows and so doing, the watchful Miss Jenny accompanied the action with an expressive and emphatic sip of the shrub and water. "As far as this goes," said Miss Abbey Poterson, when she had read it several times and thought about it, "it proves," what didn't much need proving, "that rogue rider is a villain." I had my doubts with ease, not the villain who solely did the deed, but I have no expectation of those doubts ever being cleared out now. I believe I did Lizzie's father wrong, but never Lizzie's self, because when things were at the worst, I trusted her. I had perfect confidence in her, tried to persuade her to come to me for a refuge. I'm very sorry to have done a man wrong, particularly when it can't be undone. Be kind enough to let Lizzie know, I say, not forgetting that if she'll come to the porters, after all, bygones being bygones, she will find a home at the porters, and a friend at the borters. She knows Miss Abbey of old, reminder, and she knows what like the home and what like the friend is likely to turn out. I'm generally short and sweet, or short and sour, according as it may be, and as opinions vary." Remark Miss Abbey, and that's about all I've got to say, and enough too. But before the shrub and water was sipped out, Miss Abbey bethought herself that you would like to keep a copy of the paper by her. "It's not long, sir," said she to Riah, "and perhaps you wouldn't mind just jotting it down." The old man willingly put on his spectacles, and, standing at the little desk in the corner, where Miss Abbey filed her receipts and kept her sample files, customer scores were interdited by the strict administration of the porters, wrote out the copy and a fair round character. As he stood there doing his methodical penmanship, his ancient scribe-like figure intent upon the work, and the little doll's dressmaker sitting in her golden bow before the fire, Miss Abbey had her doubts whether she had not dreamed those two rare figures in the bar of the six jolly fellowships, and might not wake with a nod next moment and find him gone. Miss Abbey had twice made the experiment of shutting her eyes and opening them again, still finding the figures there, when, dreamlike, a confused hubbub arose in the public room. As she started up, and they all three looked at one another, it became a noise of clamouring voices and the stare of feet, and all the windows were heard to be hastily thrown up, and shouts and cries came floating into the house from the river; a moment more and bobbed literary came clattering along the passage with the noise of all the nails in his boots condensed into every separate nail. "What is it?" asked Miss Abbey. "It's summit, run down in the fog-mom," answered Bob. "There's ever so many people in the river." "Kill him to put on all the catamels," cried Miss Abbey. "See the boilers full, get a bath out, hang some blankets to the fire, heat some stone bottles, have your senses about you, you girls downstairs, and use 'em." While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob, whom she seized by the hair, and who's head she knocked against the wall as a general injunction to vigilance and presence of mind, and partly hailed to the kitchen with them, the company in the public room, jostling one another, brushed out to the causeway, and the outer noise increased. "Come and look," said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all three hurried to the vacated public room, and passed by one of the windows into the wooden veranda, overhanging the river. "Does anybody down there know what has happened?" demanded Miss Abbey in her voice of authority. "It is steamer, Miss Abbey," cried one blurred figure in the fog. "It always is a steamer, Miss Abbey," cried another. "Them's there lights, Miss Abbey, what you see a blink in yonder," cried another. "She's a blowing off her steam, Miss Abbey, and that's what makes the fog of the north worse, don't you see?" explained another. Boats were putting off, tortures were lighting up. People were rushing tumultuously to the water's edge. Some man fell in with a splash and was pulled out again with a roar of laughter. The drags were called for. A cry for the life boy passed her mouth to mouth. It was impossible to make out what was going on upon the river, for every boat that put off, sculled into the fog, and were lost to view at a boat's length. Nothing was clear but that the unpopular steamer was assailed with reproaches on all sides. She was the murderer, bound for Gallows Bay. She was the manslaughter, bound for penal settlement. Her captain ought to be tried for his life. Her crew ran down men and robots of the relish. She mashed up Thames Lighten with her paddles. She fired property with her funnels. She always was, and she always would be, wreaking destruction upon somebody or something after the manner of all her kind. The whole bulk of the fog teamed with such taunts, uttered in tones of universal hoarseness. All the while, the steamer's lights moved spectrally, very little, as she lay too, waiting the upshot of whatever accident had happened. Now she began burning blue lights. These made a luminous patch about her, as if she had set the fog on fire, and in the patch, the cries changing their note, and becoming more fitful and more excited. Shadows of men and boats could be seen moving, while voices shouted, "There! There again!" A couple more strokes ahead, "Hara! Look out! Hold on! Hall in!" and the like. Lastly, with a few tumbling plots of blue fire, the night closed in dark again. The wheels of the steamer were heard revolving, and her lights glided smoothly away in the direction of the sea. It appeared to Miss Abby and her two companions that a considerable time had been thus occupied. There was now as eager a set towards the shore beneath the house as they had been from it, and it was only on the first boat of the rush coming in that it was known what had occurred. "If that's Tom Tutl," Miss Abby made proclamation in her most commanding tones, "let him instantly come underneath here." The submiss of Tom complied, attended by a crowd. "What is it, Tutl?" demanded Miss Abby. "Yes, a foreign steamer, Miss, ran down a worry." "How many in the weary?" "One man, Miss Abby." "Found?" "Yes. He's been under a long time, Miss, but they grappled up the body." "Let him bring it here." "You, Bob Lidory, shut the house door and stand by it on the inside, and don't you open it till I tell you. Any police down there?" "Here, Miss Abby," was official rejoinder. "After they have brought the body in, keep the crowd out, will you?" "And help Bob Lidory to shut him out." "All right, Miss Abby?" The autocratic landlady withdrew into the house with Ryan and Miss Jenny, and disposed those forces, one and either side of her, within the half door of the bar, as behind a breastwork. "You two stand close here," said Miss Abby, "and you come to know how it, and see it brought in. Bob, you stand by the door." That sentinel, smartly giving his roll, shirt sleeves, an extra, and a final tuck on his shoulders obeyed. "Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps, shuffle and talk without, momentary pause, two peculiarly blunt knocks or pokes at the door, as if the dead man arriving on his back was striking at it with the soles of his motionless feet. As a stretcher, or their shutter, whichever the two they are carrying," said Miss Abby, with experienced ear, "open you, Bob." Door opened, heavy tread of laden men, a halt, a rush, stoppage of rush, door shut, baffled boots from the vexed soles of disappointed outsiders. "Come on, men," said Miss Abby, "for so potent was she with her subjects, that even then the bearers awaited her permission. First floor?" The entry being low, and the staircase being low, they so took up the burden they had set down as to carry that low. The recumbent figure, in passing, lay hardly as high as the half-door. Miss Abby started back at sight of it. "Why? Good God," said she, turning to her two companions, "that's a very man who made the declaration we have just had in our hands. That's riderhood." End of book three, chapter two. Chapter three, the same respected friend, in more aspects than one. In sooth it is riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and shell of riderhood, and no other, that is born into Miss Abby's first raw bedroom. Suppled to twist and turn, as the rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now, and not without much shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his beer this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off it and being tumbled in a heap over the value-strades, can he be got upstairs. "Hetch a doctor!" Quirk was happy, and then "Hetch his daughter!" on both of which errands, quick messengers depart. The doctor-seeking messenger meets the doctor half-way, coming under convoy of police. Doctor examines the dank carcass and pronouncers, not hopefully, that it is worthwhile trying to reanimate the same. All the best means are at once in action, and everybody present lends a hand, and a heart and soul. No one has the least regard for the man, with them all he has been an objective avoidance, suspicion, and aversion, but the spark of life within him is curiously separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest in it, probably because it is life, and they are living and must die. In answer to the doctor's enquiry, how did it happen, and was anyone to blame, Tom Tuttle gives in his verdict unavoidable accident, and no one to blame but the sufferer. "He was slinking about in his boat," says Tom, "which slinking were not the speak ill of the dead, the manner of the man, when he come up, fought the steamers' bows, and she cut him in two. Mr. Tuttle is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as that he means the boat, and not the man, for the man lies whole before them." Captain Joey, the bottle-nosed regular customer in the glazed hat, is a pupil of the much respected old school, and, having insinuated himself into the chamber, in the execution of the important service of carrying the drowned man's neckerchief, favors the doctor with a sagacious old scholastic suggestion that the body should be hung up by the heels. "Similar," says Captain Joey, "to mutton in a butcher's shop," and should then, as a particularly choice manoeuvre for promoting easy respiration, be rolled upon casks. These scraps of the wisdom of the captain's ancestors are received with such speechless indignation by Miss Abby that she instantly seizes the captain by the collar, and without a single word ejects him, not presuming to remonstrate from the scene. They then remain, to assist the doctor and Tom, only those three other regular customers—Bob Glamour, William Williams, and Jonathan, family name of the latter, if any unknown to mankind—who are quite enough. Miss Abby, having looked in to make sure that nothing is wanted, descends to the bar, and there awaits the result, with the gentle Jew and Miss Jenny Ren. "If you are not gone for good, Mr. Ryderhood, it be something to know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mortality that we work so hard at with such patient perseverance yields no sign of you. If you are gone for good, rogue, it is very solemn, and if you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense and mystery of the latter question involving that of where you may be now, there is a solemnity even added to that of death, making us who are in attendance alike afraid to look on you and to look off you, and making those below start at the least sound of a creaking plank in the floor. "Stay." "Did that eyelid tremble?" "So the doctor, breathing low and closely watching, asks himself." "No." "Did that nostril twitch?" "No." "This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel any faint flutter under my hand upon the chest?" "No." "Over and over again." "No." "No." "But try over and over again, nevertheless." "See?" "A token of life." "An indubitable token of life." "The spark may smolder and go out or it may glow and expand, but see?" "The four rough fellows, seeing, shed tears." "Neither ride a hood in this world, nor ride a hood in the other, could draw tears from them, but a striving human soul between the two can do it easily. He is struggling to come back. Now he is almost here. Now he is far away again. Now he is struggling harder to get back, and yet, like us all, when we swoon, like us all every day of our lives when we wake, he is instinctively unwilling to be restored to the consciousness of this existence, and will be left dormant if he could." Bob Littery returns with pleasant ride a hood, who is out, when sought for, and hard to find. She has a shawl over her head, and her first action when she takes it off, weeping, and curtsy-system is abbey, as to wind her hair up. "Thank you, Miss Abbey, for having farther here." "I've earned a say, girl. I didn't know who it was," returns Miss Abbey, "but I hope it would have been pretty much the same if I had known." Poor pleasant. Fortified with the sip of brandy is ushered into the first raw chamber. She could not express much sentiment about her father if she were called upon to pronounce his funeral oration, but she has a great tenderness for him that he ever had for her, and prying bitterly when she sees him stretched unconscious, asked the doctor with clasped hands. "He's there. No hopes, sir." "Oh, poor father. He's poor father did," to which the doctor on one knee beside the body, busy and watchful, only rejoins without looking round. "Now, my girl, unless you have the self-commound to be perfectly quiet, I cannot allow you to remain in the room." Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back hair, which is in fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches with terrified interest all that goes on. Her natural woman's aptitude soon renders her able to give a little help. Anticipating the doctor's want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for him, and so, by degrees, is entrusted with the charge of supporting her father's head upon her arm. It is something so new to pleasant, to see her father an object of sympathy and interest, to find anyone very willing to tolerate his society in this world, not to say pressingly and soothingly and treating him to belong to it, that it gives her a sensation she never experienced before. Some hazy idea that if affairs could remain thus for a long time, it would be a respectable change, floats in her mind. Also, some vague idea that the old evil is drowned out of him, and that if he should happily come back to resume his occupation of the empty form that lies upon the bed, his spirit will be altered. In which state of mind she kisses the stony lips and quite believes that the impassive hand she chafes will revive a tender hand if it revive ever. Sweet delusion for pleasant ride-a-hood. But they minister to him with such extraordinary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their vigilance is so great, their excited joy grows so intense as the signs of life strengthen that how can she resist it, poor thing. And now he begins to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the doctor declares him to have come back from that inexplicable journey where he stopped on the dark road, and to be here. Tom Toodle, who is nearest to the doctor when he says this, grasps the doctor fervently by the hand. Bob Glamour, William Williams, and Jonathan of the no-sir name all shake hands of one another round, and with the doctor too. Bob Glamour blows his nose, and Jonathan of the no-sir name is moved to do likewise, but lacking a pocket handkerchief abandons that outlet for his emotion. Pleasant Shed's tears deserving her own name, and her sweet delusion, is at its height. There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants to ask a question. He wonders where he is. Tell him. "Father, you were ran down on a river in our mis-abby-possons." He stares at his daughter, stares all around him, closes his eyes, and lies slumbering on her arm. The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad, unimpressable face is coming up from the depths of the river, or what are the depths to the surface again. As he grows warm, the doctor and the four men cool. As his lineaments soften with life, their faces and their hearts harden to him. "He will do now," says the doctor, washing his hands and looking at the patient with growing disfavor. "Many a better man," moralizes Tom Tootle with the gloomy shake of the head, "Ain't heard is luck." "He's to be hoped you make the better use of his life," says Bob Glanna. "Then I expect he will." "Or, then he done a four," adds William Williams. "But now, naughty," says Jonathan of the No-Sir name, clenching the quartet. They speak in a low tone because of his daughter, but she sees that they have all drawn off, and that they stand in a group at the other end of the room, shunning him. It would be too much to suspect them of being sorry that he didn't die when he had done so much towards it, but they clearly wish that they had had a better subject to bestow their pains on. Intelligence is conveyed to Miss Abby in the bar, who reappears on the scene and contemplates from a distance, holding whispered discourse with the doctor. The spark of life was deeply interesting while it was in a bams, but now that it has got established in Mr. Riderhood, there appears to be a general desire that circumstances have admitted of which being developed in anybody else rather than that gentleman. "However," says Miss Abby, chewing them up, "you have done your duty, like good and true men, and you'd better come down and take something at the expense of the porters. This they all do, leaving the daughter watching the father, to whom, in their absence, Bob Lidry presents himself." "His gills look drawn, don't they?" says Bob after inspecting the patient, pleasant faintly nods. "His gills, or look rama, but he wakes, aren't they?" says Bob, pleasant hopes not. "Why? Why, if I hunt himself here, you know?" Bob explains, "cause Miss Abby forbred him the house, and ordered him out of it. But what you may call the fates, what had he meant with again? Which is ramness, ain't it?" "He wouldn't have come here of his own accord," returns poor pleasant, with an effort at a little pride. "Now!" retorts Bob, nor do he wouldn't have been letting in if he had. The short delusion has quite dispelled now, as plainly as she sees on her arm the old father, unimproved, pleasant sees that everybody there will cut him when he recovers consciousness. "I'll take him away ever so soon as I can," thinks pleasant with a sigh. "He's best at home." Presently they all return, and wait for him to become conscious that they will all be glad to get rid of him. Some clothes are got together of him to wear, his own being saturated with water, and his present dress being composed of blankets, becoming more and more uncomfortable, as though the prevalent dislike were finding him out somewhere in his sleep and expressing itself to him. The patient at last opens his eyes wide, and is assisted by his daughter to sit up in bed. "Well, Ridehood," says the doctor, "how do you feel?" he replies graphically. "Nothing a boast on!" Having in fact returned to life in an uncommonly sulky state. "I don't mean to preach, but I hope," said the doctor, gravy shaking his head, "as this escape, may have a good effect upon you, Ridehood." The patient's discontented draw of a reply is not intelligible. His daughter, however, could interpret if she would, that what he says is, he "don't want no pole parroting." Mr. Ridehood next demands his shirt, and draws it on over his head with his daughter's help, exactly as if he had just had a fight. "Wanted a steamer," he pauses to ask her, "he's farther. I'll have a loner, buster, and make a pay for it." He then buttons his linen very moodily, twice or thrice stopping to examine his arms and hands, as if to see what punishment he has received in the fight. He then doggedly demands his other garments, and slowly gets them on, with an appearance of great malevolence towards his lay-deponent and all the spectators. He has an impression that his nose is bleeding, and several times draws the back of his hand across it, and looks for the result in a pugilistic manner, greatly strengthening that incongruous resemblance. "Where's my fur-cap?" he asks in a surly voice, when he shuffles his clothes on. "In the river," somebody rejoins, "and what, then a warnest man, pick it up?" "Of course, here, what was there, and a cut off with it are, Oids. You're a real lot, all on you." Thus Mr. Viderhood, taking from the hands of his daughter, with special ill-will, a lent cap, and grumbling as he pulls it down over his ears, then getting on his unsteady legs, leaning heavily upon her, and growling, "Oh, still, can't you? What? You must be a staggering next master." He takes his departure out of the ring, in which he has had that little turn-up with death. "End of Book Three, Chapter Three." Chapter Four, a happy return of the day. Mr. and Mrs. Wilfer had seen a full quarter of a hundred more anniversaries of their wedding day than Mr. and Mrs. Lamel had seen of theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion in the bosom of their family. Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by that circumstance, on account of having looked forward to the return of the auspicious day with sanguine anticipations of enjoyment. It was kept morally, rather as a fast, than a feast, enabling Mrs. Wilfer to hold a somber darkling state which exhibited that impressive woman in her choicest colours. The noble lady's condition on these delightful occasions was one compounded of heroic endurance and heroic forgiveness. Lured indications of the better marriages she might have made, Sean athwart the awful gloom of her composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as a little monster unaccountably favoured by heaven, who had possessed himself of a blessing for which many of his superiors had sued and contended in vain. So firmly had this, his position towards his treasure, become established, that when the anniversary arrived, it always found him in an apologetic state. It is not impossible that his modest penitence may have even gone a length of sometimes severely reproving him for that he ever took the liberty of making so exalted a character his wife. As for the children of the Union, their experience of these festivals had been sufficiently uncomfortable to lead them annually to wish, when out of their tenderest years, either that Ma had married somebody else instead of much teased Pa, or that Pa had married somebody else instead of Ma. When there came to be but two sisters left at home, the daring mind of Bella, on the next of these occasions, scaled the height of wandering with drow vexation what an earth Pa ever could have seen in Ma to deuce him to make such a little fool of himself as to ask her to have him. The revolving year, now bringing the day round in its orderly sequence, Bella arrived in the Boffin chariot to assist at the celebration. It was the family custom, and the day recurred, to sacrifice a pair of fowls on the altar of Heimann, and Bella had sent a note beforehand to intimate that she would bring the vote of offering with her. So Bella and the fowls, by the united energies of two horses, two men, four wheels, and a plum-putting carriage dog, with an uncomfortable collar on as if he had been George IV, were deposited at the door of the parental dwelling. They were there received by Mrs. Wilfer in person, whose dignity on this, as on most special occasions, was heightened by a mysterious toothache. "I shall not acquire the carriage at night," said Bella, "I shall walk back." The male domestic of Mrs. Boffin touched his hat, and in the act of departure, had an awful glare bestowed upon him by Mrs. Wilfer, intended to carry deep into his audacious soul the assurance that whatever his private suspicions might be, male domestic and livery, were no rarity there. "Well, dear Ma," said Bella, "and how do you do?" "I am as well, Bella," replied Mrs. Wilfer, "as can be expected." "Dear me, Ma," said Bella, "you talk as if one was just born." "That's exactly what Ma has been doing," interposed Lavie over the maternal shoulder. "Ever since we got up this morning, it's already well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating, it is impossible to conceive." Mrs. Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by any words, attended both her daughters to the kitchen, where the sacrifice was to be prepared. "Mr. Roke Smith," said she, resigningly, "has been so polite as to place his sitting room at our disposal today. You will therefore, Bella, be entertained in the humble abode of your parents, so far in accordance with your present style of living, that there will be a drawing room for your reception as well as a dining room. Your papa invited Mr. Roke Smith to partake of our lowly fare, in excusing himself on account of a particular engagement he offered at the use of his apartment." Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own room at Mr. Boffins, but she approved of his staying away. We should only have put one another out of countenance, she thought, and we do that quite often enough as it is. Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room, to run up to it with the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its contents. It was tastefully, though economically furnished, and very neatly arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English, French, and Italian, and in a portfolio on the writing-table there were sheets upon sheets of memoranda, and calculations and figures, evidently referring to the Boffin property. On that table also, carefully backed with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from afar to be her husband. She shrank from this ghostly surprise, and felt quite frightened as she rolled and tied it up again. Peeping about here and there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a pretty woman, elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy chair. "Oh, indeed, sir," said Bella, after stopping to ruminate before it, "Oh, indeed, sir, I fancy I can guess whom you think that's like, but I tell you what it's much more like, your impudence." Having said which, she decamped, not solely because she was offended, but because there was nothing else to look at. "Now, ma," said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of a blush, "you and Lavi think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be cook today." "Hold," rejoined her majestic mother, "I cannot permit it, cook, in that dress." "As for my dress, ma," returned Bella, merrily searching in a dresser draw, "I mean to apronate and towel it all over the front, and as to permission, I mean to do without." "You cook," said Mrs Wilfer, "you, who never cooked when you were at home." "Yes, ma," returned Bella, "that is precisely the state of the case." She girded herself for the white apron, and busily with knots and pins contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it had caught around the neck to kiss her. Over this bib, her dimples looked delightful, and under it a pretty figure, not less so. "Now, ma," said Bella, pushing back her hair from her temples with both hands, "what's first?" "First," returned Mrs Wilfer solemnly, "if you're persistent what I cannot but regard as conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage in which you arrived, which I do, ma. First then, you'd put the fouls down to the fire." "To be sure," cried Bella, "and flour them, and twirl them round, and there they go," sending them spinning at a great rate. "What's next, ma?" "Next," said Mrs Wilfer, with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne. I would recommend examination of the bacon and the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork; preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour. As, of course, I do, ma." Persisting, Bella gave her attention to one thing, and forgot the other, and gave her attention to the other, and forgot the third, and remembering the third was distracted by the fourth, and made amends whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fouls an extra spin, which made their chance of ever getting cooked exceedingly doubtful. But it was pleasant cookery, too. Meantime, Miss Lavigna, oscillating between the kitchen and the opposite room, prepared the dining table in the latter chamber. This office, she, always doing her household spriting with unwillings, performed in a startling series of wisks and bumps, laying the tablecloth as if you were raising the wind, putting down the glasses and salt-sellers as if you were knocking at the door, and clashing the knives and forks in a skirmishing manner suggestive of hand-to-hand conflict. "Look at ma!" whispered Lavigna to Bella, when this was done, and they stood over the roasting fouls. "If one was the most beautiful child in existence, of course, and the whole one hopes one is, isn't she enough to make one want to poke her with something wooden, sitting there bolt upright in a corner?" "Only suppose," returned Bella, "that poor Pa was to set bolt upright in another corner." "My dear, he couldn't do it," said Levy, "Pa would long directly. But indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could keep so bolt upright as ma or put such an amount of aggravation into one back. What's the matter, ma? Ain't you well, ma?" "Dautilus, I am very well," returned Mrs. Wilfer, turning her eyes upon her youngest born with scornful fortitude. "What should be the matter with me?" "You don't seem very brisk, ma," retorted Levy, the bold. "Bristk!" repeated her parent. "Bristk! When's the low expression, Lavina? If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my lot, letter that suffice for my family." "Well, ma," returned Levy, "since you will force it out of me, I must respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under the greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your wedding day, and that is very disinterested in you and an immense blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too boastful in that boon." "You incarnation of source in us," said Mrs. Wilfer, "do you speak like that to me? On this day, of all days in the year, pray do you know what would have become of you, if I had not bestowed my hand upon R.W., your father, on this day?" "No, ma," replied Levy, "I really do not, and with the greatest respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you do either." Whether or not the sharp vigor of this sally on a weak point of Mrs. Wilfer's entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time is rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce and the person of Mr. George Sampson. Bidden to the feast as a friend of the family, whose affections were now understood to be in course of transference from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept possibly in remembrance of his bad taste and having overlooked her in the first instance, under a course of stinging discipline. "I congratulate you, Mrs. Wilfer," said Mr. George Sampson, who had meditated this neat address while coming along. "On the day," Mrs. Wilfer thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again became an unresisting praise of that inscrutable toothache. "I am surprised," said Mr. Sampson feebly, "that's Mrs. Bella condescends to cook." Here, Mrs. Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman with a crushing supposition that at all events it was no business of his. This disposed of Mrs. Sampson in a melancholy retirement of spirit, until the cherub arrived, who was amazement that the lovely woman's occupation was great. However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it, and then sat down, bibrous and apronless, to partake of it as an illustrious guest. Mrs. Wilfer first responding to her husband's cheerful, "For what we are about to receive!" with a supportful, "Amen!" calculated to cast a dump upon the stoutest appetite. "But what?" said Bella, as she watched the carving of the fowls, "makes them pink inside, I wander par. Is it the breed?" "No, I don't think it's the breed, my dear," returned par, "I rather think it is because they are not done." "They ought to be," said Bella, "yes, I am aware they ought to be my dear," rejoined her father, "but they ain't." So the grid-iron was put in requisition, and the good-tempered cherub, who was often as uncharubically employed in his own family as if he had been in the employment of some of the old masters, undertook to grill the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him, a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted, this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype, with the difference say that he performed with a blacking brush on the family's boots instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and double bases, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose instead of foreshortening himself in the air with the vagus intentions. Bella helped him with his supplemental cookery, and made him very happy, but put him in mortal terror, too, by asking him when they sat down at the table again, how he supposed they cooked fowls at the Greenwich dinners, and whether he believed they really were such pleasant dinners as people said. His secret winks and nods of remonstrance and reply made the mischievous Bella laugh until she choked, and then Lavigna was obliged to slap her on the back, and then she laughed them all. But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table, to whom her father, in the innocence of his good fellowship, at intervals appealed with, "My dear, I'm afraid you're not enjoying yourself." "Why so, R.W?" she would sonoriously reply, "Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts." "Not at all," would be the rejoinder, and exactly the same tone, "would you take a merry thought, my dear?" "Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R.W." "Well, but my dear, do you like it?" "I like it as well as I like anything, R.W." The stately woman would then, with the meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general good, pursue her dinner as if you were feeding somebody else on high public grounds. Bella had brought dessert, and two bottles of wine, thus shedding unprecedented spender on the occasion. Mrs. Wilfer did the honours of the first glass by proclaiming, "R.W., I drink to you." "Thank you, my dear, and I to you." "Pah and ma," said Bella, "permit me," Mrs. Wilfer interposed without stretched love, "No, I think not. I drink to your papa. If, however, you insist on including me, I can, in gratitude, offer no objection." "Why, law, ma," interposed Lavi the Bold, "isn't it the day that made you in par one the same? I have no patience." "By whatever other circumstance the day may be marked, it is not the day, Lavigna, and which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me, I beg, nay, command, that you will not pounce. R.W., it is appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to obey, and it is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both are healths." Drinking the toast was tremendous stiffness. "I really am a little afraid, my dear," hinted the cherub meekly, "that you are not enjoying yourself." "On the contrary," returned Mrs. Wilfher, "quite so. Why should I not?" "I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might—my face—might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should know it if I smiled?" And she did smile, manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was so very much appalled by its expression, as to cast about in his thoughts concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself. "The mind naturally falls," said Mrs. Wilfher, "shall I say into a reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect, on a day like this?" Lavi, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied, but not audibly, for goodness' sake, say whichever of the two you like best mar, and get it over. "The mind," pursued Mrs. Wilfher in an oratorical manner, "naturally reverts to Pappar and Mama. I hear allude to my parents at a period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall, perhaps I was. Pappar and Mama were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a finer woman than my mother, never than my father." The irrepressible Lavi remarked aloud, "Whatever grand Pappar was, he wasn't a female." "Your grand Pappar!" retorted Mrs. Wilfher with an awful look, and in an awful tone, "was what I describe him to have been, and would have struck any of his grandchildren to the earth, who presumed to question it. It was one of the mass cherished hopes that I should become united to a tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so, it was equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia." These remarks being offered to Mr. George Sampson, who had not the courage to come out for single combat, but lurked with his chest under the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs. Wilfher proceeded, and her voice had been creasing sternness and impressiveness, until she could force that skulker to give himself up. Mama would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding of what afterwards happened, for she would frequently urge upon me not a little man, promise me my child not a little man, never, never, never marry a little man. Pappar also would remark to me he possessed extraordinary humor, that a family of whales must not lie themselves with sprats. His company was eagerly sought. As may be supposed, by the wits of the day, and our house was their continual resort. I have known as many as three copper-plate engravers exchanging the most exquisite cellies and retorts there at one time. Here Mr. Sampson delivered himself captive, and said, with an uneasy movement on his chair, that three was a large number, and it must have been highly entertaining. Among the most prominent members of that distinguished circle was a gentleman measuring six feet four in height. He was not an engraver. Here Mr. Sampson said, with no reason, whatever. Of course not. This gentleman was so obliging as to honour me with attentions, which I could not fail to understand. Here Mr. Sampson murmured, that, when it came to that, you could always tell. I immediately announced to both my parents that those attentions were misplaced, and that I could not favour his suit. They inquired, was he too tall? I replied it was not the stature, but the intellect was too lofty. At our house I said the tone was too brilliant. The pressure was too high to be maintained by me, a mere woman, in every day domestic life. I well remember Mama's clasping her hands and exclaiming, "This will end in a little man." Here Mr. Sampson glanced at his host, and shook his head with despondency. She afterwards went so far as to predict that it would end in a little man whose mind would be below the average, but that was in what I made in nominate a paroxysm of maternal disappointment. "Within a month," said Mrs. Wilfer, deepening her voice as if she were relating a terrible ghost story, "within a month I first saw R.W. my husband. Within a year I married him. It is natural for the mind to recall these dark coincidences on the present day." Mr. Sampson at length released from the custody of Mrs. Wilfer's eye, now drew a long breath, and made the original and striking remark, "that there was no accounting for these sort of presentements." R.W. scratched his head and looked apologetically all round the table, until he came to his wife. When observing her as it were shrouded in a more somber veil than before, he once more hinted, "My dear, I am really afraid you are not altogether enjoying yourself," to which she once more replied, "on the contrary R.W. quite so." The wretched Mr. Sampson's position at this agreeable entertainment was truly pitiable, for not only was he exposed defenseless to the herangs of Mrs. Wilfer, but he received the utmost contumbly at the hands of Levenia, who, partly to show Bella that she, Levenia, could do what you like with him, and partly to pay him off for still obviously admiring Bella's beauty, led him the life of a dog. Illuminated on the one hand by the stately graces of Mrs. Wilfer's oratory, and shattered on the other by the cheques and frowns of the young lady to whom he had devoted himself in his destitution, the sufferings of this young gentleman were distressing to witness. If his mind for the moment reeled under them, it may be urged in extenuation of its weakness that it was constitutionally a knock-kneed mind and never very strong upon its legs. The rosy hours were thus beguiled until it was time for Bella to have Paa's escort back. The dimples duly tied up in the bonnet strings, and the leaf-taking done, they got out into the air, and the cherub drew a long breath as if he found it refreshing. "Well, dear Paa," said Bella, "the anniversary may be considered over." "Yes, my dear," returned the cherub, "there's another of them gone." Bella drew his arm closer through hers as they walked along and gave it a number of consolatory pats. "Thank you, my dear," he said, as if she had spoken, "I am all right, my dear." "Well, and how do you get on, Bella?" "I am not at all improved, Paa," ate you really, though. "No, Paa. Under contrary, I am worse." "Law," said the cherub. "I am worse, Paa. I mix so many calculations how much a year I must have when I marry, and what is the least I can manage to do with that I'm beginning to get wrinkles over my nose. Did you notice any wrinkles over my nose this evening, Paa?" Paa, laughing at this, Bella gave him two or three shakes. "You won't laugh, sir, when you see your lovely woman turning haggard. You'd better be prepared in time, I can tell you. I shall not be able to keep my greetiness for money out of my eyes long, and when you see it there, you'll be sorry, and serve you right for not being warned in time. Now, sir, we entered into a bond of confidence. Have you anything to impart?" "I thought it was you who was to impart my love." "Oh, did you indeed, sir? Then why didn't you ask me the moment we came out?" "The confidences of lovely women are not to be slighted. However, I forgive you this once, and look here, Paa. That's," Bella laid the little forefinger of her right glove on her lip, and then laid it on her father's lip. "That's a kiss for you, and now I am going seriously to tell you. Let me see how many. Four secrets, mind, serious, grave, weighty secrets, strictly between ourselves." "Number one, my dear," said her father, settling her arm comfortably and confidentially. "Number one," said Bella, "will electrify you, Paa. Who do you think has?" She was confused here in spite of her merry way at beginning. "Has made an offer to me?" Paa looked into her face, and looked at the ground, and looked into her face again, and declared he could never guess. "Mr. Rook Smith." "You don't tell me so, my dear." "Mr. Rook Smith, Paa," said Bella, separating the syllables for emphasis. "What do you say to that?" Paa answered quietly with the counter-question. "What did you say to that, my love?" "I said no," returned Bella sharply, "of course." "Yes, of course," said her father, meditating. "And I told him what I thought it, a betrayal of trust on his part, and a refund to me," said Bella. "Yes, to be sure. I am astonished indeed. I wonder he committed himself without seeing more of his way first. No, I think of it. I suspect he always has admired you, though, my dear." "A heckly coachman may admire me," remarked Bella with a touch of her mother's loftiness. "It's highly probable, my love." "Number two, my dear." "Number two, Paa, is much to the same purpose, though not so preposterous. Mr. Lightwood would propose to me if I would let him." "Then I understand my dear that you don't intend to let him." Bella again, saying with her former emphasis, "Why, of course not," her father felt himself bound to echo, "of course not." "I don't care for him," said Bella. "That's enough," her father interposed. "No, Paa, it's not enough," rejoined Bella, giving him another shake or two. "Haven't I told you what a mercenary little rich I am? It only becomes enough when he has no money, and no clients, and no expectations, and no anything but debts." "Hah," said the charitable little depressed. "Number three, my dear." "Number three, Paa, is a better thing, a generous thing, a noble thing, a delightful thing. Mrs. Buffon has herself told me, as a secret with her own kind lips, and true ellipse never opened or closed in this life, I am sure. Had they wished to see me? Well married, and that when I marry with their consent, they will portion me most handsomely." Here the grateful girl burst out crying very heartily. "Don't cry, my darling," said her father with his hand to his eyes. "It's excusable in me to be a little overcome when I find that my dear favorite child is, after all disappointments, to be so provided for and so raised in the world. But don't you cry, don't you cry? I am very thankful. I congratulate you with all my heart, my dear." The good soft little fellow, drying his eyes here, Bella put her arms round his neck and tenderly kissed him on the high road, passionately telling him he was the best of fathers and the best of friends, and that on her wedding morning she would go down on her knees to him and beg his pardon, for having ever teased him or seemed insensible to the worth of such a patient, sympathetic, genial, fresh young heart. At every one of her adjectives she redoubled her kisses, and finally kissed his hat off and then laughed immodernately when the wind took it and he ran after it. When he had recovered his hat and his breath, and they were going on again once more, said her father then, "Number four, my dear!" Bella's countenance fell in the midst of her mirth. "After all, perhaps I better put off number four par. Let me try once more, if for never so short a time, to hope that it may not really be so." The change in her strengthened the cherub's interest in number four, and he said quietly, "May not be so, my dear, may not be how, my dear!" Bella looked at impensively and shook her head. "And yet I know right well it is so par. I know it only too well." "My love," returned her father, "you make me quite uncomfortable. Have you said no to anybody else, my dear?" "No, par." "Yes, to anybody," he suggested, lifting up his eyebrows. "No, par." "Is there anybody else who would take his chance between yes and no, if you would let him, my dear?" "Not that I know of par." "There can't be somebody who won't take his chance when you want him to," said the cherub, as a last resource. "Why, of course not, par," said Bella, giving him another shake or two. "No, of course not," he assented. "Bella, my dear, I am afraid I must either have no sleep tonight, or I must press for number four." "Oh, par! There is no good in number four. I am so sorry for it. I am so unwilling to believe it. I have tried to earnestly not to see it that it is very hard to tell even to you, but Mr. Buffon is being spoiled by prosperity and is changing every day." "My dear Bella, I hope and trust not. I have hoped and trusted not to, par. But every day he changes for the worse and for the worse. Not to me, he is always much the same to me, but to others about him, before my icy grooves as vicious, capricious, hard, tyrannical, and just. If ever a good man were ruined by good fortune, it is my benefactor. And yet, par, think how terrible the fascination of money is. I see this, and hate this, and dread this, and don't know, but that money might make it a much worse change in me. And yet I have money always in my thoughts and my desires, and the whole life I place before myself is money, money, money. And what money can make of life?" End of book three, chapter four. Chapter five, the golden dustman, fours, and a bad- 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. Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck. 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