CHAPTER XX

A New Lodger

The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river

very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy

saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his

penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into

his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will,

but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting

nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual

energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees

with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool,

and stab his desk, and gape.

Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken

out a shooting license and gone down to his father’s, and Mr. Guppy’s

two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Richard

Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for

the time being established in Kenge’s room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes.

So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the

confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce

in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good

enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming,

he would have got it painted.

Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool

in Kenge and Carboy’s office of entertaining, as a matter of course,

sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants

to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he

shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these

profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains

to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of

chess without any adversary.

It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find

the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and

Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure

can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third

saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy’s office, to

wit, Young Smallweed.

Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick

Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is

much doubted in Lincoln’s Inn. He is now something under fifteen and

an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a

passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery

Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another

lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made

article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived

from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become

a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman

(by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds

himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy’s particular

confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his

experience, on difficult points in private life.

Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying

all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after

several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of

cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent

drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and

stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds for Mr.

Smallweed’s consideration the paradox that the more you drink the

thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a

state of hopeless languor.

While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn,

surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes

conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below

and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time,

a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries,

“Hip! Gup-py!”

“Why, you don’t mean it!” says Mr. Guppy, aroused. “Small! Here’s

Jobling!” Small’s head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling.

“Where have you sprung up from?” inquires Mr. Guppy.

“From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can’t stand it any

longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you’d lend me half a crown. Upon

my soul, I’m hungry.”

Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to

seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.

“I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I

want to get some dinner.”

“Will you come and dine with me?” says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the

coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.

“How long should I have to hold out?” says Jobling.

“Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,”

returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.

“What enemy?”

“A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?”

“Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?” says Mr.

Jobling.

Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much

earnestness that he “can’t stand it.”

“You shall have the paper,” says Mr. Guppy. “He shall bring it down.

But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and

read. It’s a quiet place.”

Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed

supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon

him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted

with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy

retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.

“Well, and how are you?” says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.

“So, so. How are you?”

Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling

ventures on the question, “How is SHE?” This Mr. Guppy resents as a

liberty, retorting, “Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind—”

Jobling begs pardon.

“Any subject but that!” says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his

injury. “For there ARE chords, Jobling—”

Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.

During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the

dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,

“Return immediately.” This notification to all whom it may concern,

he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the

angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron

that they may now make themselves scarce.

Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of

the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang,

where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to

have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it

may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are

nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish

wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain

there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he

drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his

collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it,

whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by

Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account

for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices

that his father was John Doe and his mother the only female member of

the Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a

blue bag.

Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window

of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of

peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr.

Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has

his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald

patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of

no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized “bread” or

proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut.

In the matter of gravy he is adamant.

Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience,

Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day’s banquet, turning

an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue

of viands and saying “What do YOU take, Chick?” Chick, out of the

profundity of his artfulness, preferring “veal and ham and French

beans—and don’t you forget the stuffing, Polly” (with an unearthly

cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like

order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the

waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of

Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers.

Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys

intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,

amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a

clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which

brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more

nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost

of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and

steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated

atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break

out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the

legal triumvirate appease their appetites.

Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require.

His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening

nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same

phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at

the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed

circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a

shabby air.

His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some

little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and

ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in

theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. “Thank you, Guppy,” says Mr.

Jobling, “I really don’t know but what I WILL take another.”

Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.

Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half

way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at

his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his

legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment,

Mr. Guppy says, “You are a man again, Tony!”

“Well, not quite yet,” says Mr. Jobling. “Say, just born.”

“Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?”

“Thank you, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling. “I really don’t know but what I

WILL take summer cabbage.”

Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of

“Without slugs, Polly!” And cabbage produced.

“I am growing up, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork

with a relishing steadiness.

“Glad to hear it.”

“In fact, I have just turned into my teens,” says Mr. Jobling.

He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as

Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the

ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a

veal and ham and a cabbage.

“Now, Small,” says Mr. Guppy, “what would you recommend about

pastry?”

“Marrow puddings,” says Mr. Smallweed instantly.

“Aye, aye!” cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. “You’re there, are

you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take a marrow

pudding.”

Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant

humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of

Mr. Smallweed, “three Cheshires,” and to those “three small rums.”

This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up

his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to

himself), leans against the wall, and says, “I am grown up now,

Guppy. I have arrived at maturity.”

“What do you think, now,” says Mr. Guppy, “about—you don’t mind

Smallweed?”

“Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good

health.”

“Sir, to you!” says Mr. Smallweed.

“I was saying, what do you think NOW,” pursues Mr. Guppy, “of

enlisting?”

“Why, what I may think after dinner,” returns Mr. Jobling, “is one

thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another

thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I

to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,” says Mr. Jobling,

pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an

English stable. “Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying, and

mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.”

Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion “much more so.”

“If any man had told me,” pursues Jobling, “even so lately as when

you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over

to see that house at Castle Wold—”

Mr. Smallweed corrects him—Chesney Wold.

“Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any

man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time

as I literally find myself, I should have—well, I should have

pitched into him,” says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water

with an air of desperate resignation; “I should have let fly at his

head.”

“Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,”

remonstrates Mr. Guppy. “You were talking about nothing else in the

gig.”

“Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, “I will not deny it. I was on the wrong

side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.”

That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their

being beaten round, or worked round, but in their “coming” round! As

though a lunatic should trust in the world’s “coming” triangular!

“I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all

square,” says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and

perhaps of meaning too. “But I was disappointed. They never did. And

when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people

that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of

borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any

new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference

to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what’s a

fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap

down about the market-gardens, but what’s the use of living cheap

when you have got no money? You might as well live dear.”

“Better,” Mr. Smallweed thinks.

“Certainly. It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have

been my weaknesses, and I don’t care who knows it,” says Mr. Jobling.

“They are great weaknesses—Damme, sir, they are great. Well,”

proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,

“what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?”

Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in

his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive

manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than

as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.

“Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy, “myself and our mutual friend Smallweed—”

Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, “Gentlemen both!” and drinks.

“—Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since

you—”

“Say, got the sack!” cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. “Say it, Guppy. You

mean it.”

“No-o-o! Left the Inn,” Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.

“Since you left the Inn, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy; “and I have

mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought

of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?”

“I know there is such a stationer,” returns Mr. Jobling. “He was not

ours, and I am not acquainted with him.”

“He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him,” Mr. Guppy

retorts. “Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him

through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of

his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer

in argument. They may—or they may not—have some reference to a

subject which may—or may not—have cast its shadow on my existence.”

As it is Mr. Guppy’s perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his

particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,

to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the

human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by

remaining silent.

“Such things may be,” repeats Mr. Guppy, “or they may not be. They

are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and

Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in

busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all

Tulkinghorn’s, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our

mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?”

Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.

“Now, gentlemen of the jury,” says Mr. Guppy, “—I mean, now,

Jobling—you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.

But it’s better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want

time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You

might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for

Snagsby.”

Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks

him with a dry cough and the words, “Hem! Shakspeare!”

“There are two branches to this subject, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy.

“That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the

Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy in his

encouraging cross-examination-tone, “I think you know Krook, the

Chancellor, across the lane?”

“I know him by sight,” says Mr. Jobling.

“You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?”

“Everybody knows her,” says Mr. Jobling.

“Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of

late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the

amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of

instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her

presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into

a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.

You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as

quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He’ll ask no questions

and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me—before the clock

strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling,” says

Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar

again, “he’s an extraordinary old chap—always rummaging among a

litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and

write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most

extraordinary old chap, sir. I don’t know but what it might be worth

a fellow’s while to look him up a bit.”

“You don’t mean—” Mr. Jobling begins.

“I mean,” returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming

modesty, “that I can’t make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend

Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can’t make

him out.”

Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, “A few!”

“I have seen something of the profession and something of life,

Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, “and it’s seldom I can’t make a man out, more

or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret

(though I don’t believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,

he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,

and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a

smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a

money-lender—all of which I have thought likely at different

times—it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I

don’t see why you shouldn’t go in for it, when everything else

suits.”

Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on

the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.

After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in

their pockets, and look at one another.

“If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy with a

sigh. “But there are chords in the human mind—”

Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,

Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and

informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack,

his purse, “as far as three or four or even five pound goes,” will be

at his disposal. “For never shall it be said,” Mr. Guppy adds with

emphasis, “that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!”

The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that

Mr. Jobling says with emotion, “Guppy, my trump, your fist!” Mr.

Guppy presents it, saying, “Jobling, my boy, there it is!” Mr.

Jobling returns, “Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!” Mr.

Guppy replies, “Jobling, we have.”

They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,

“Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take another glass

for old acquaintance sake.”

“Krook’s last lodger died there,” observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental

way.

“Did he though!” says Mr. Jobling.

“There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don’t mind that?”

“No,” says Mr. Jobling, “I don’t mind it; but he might as well have

died somewhere else. It’s devilish odd that he need go and die at MY

place!” Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times

returning to it with such remarks as, “There are places enough to die

in, I should think!” or, “He wouldn’t have liked my dying at HIS

place, I dare say!”

However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to

dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,

as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.

Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and

conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon

returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he

has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,

sleeping “like one o’clock.”

“Then I’ll pay,” says Mr. Guppy, “and we’ll go and see him. Small,

what will it be?”

Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one

hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: “Four veals and

hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer

cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six

breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four

half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is

eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in

half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!”

Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed

dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a

little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to

read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to

himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his

eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to

have disappeared under the bedclothes.

Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where

they find Krook still sleeping like one o’clock, that is to say,

breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite

insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the

table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle

and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that

even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut

and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.

“Hold up here!” says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old

man another shake. “Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!”

But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a

spirituous heat smouldering in it. “Did you ever see such a stupor as

he falls into, between drink and sleep?” says Mr. Guppy.

“If this is his regular sleep,” returns Jobling, rather alarmed,

“it’ll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking.”

“It’s always more like a fit than a nap,” says Mr. Guppy, shaking him

again. “Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times

over! Open your eyes!”

After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his

visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another,

and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched

lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.

“He is alive, at any rate,” says Mr. Guppy. “How are you, my Lord

Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter

of business.”

The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least

consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They

help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them.

“How do you do, Mr. Krook?” says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. “How

do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are

pretty well?”

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at

nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against

the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it,

and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the

movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these

things recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur

cap on his head and looking keenly at them.

“Your servant, gentlemen; I’ve been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,

odd times.”

“Rather so, indeed, sir,” responds Mr. Guppy.

“What? You’ve been a-trying to do it, have you?” says the suspicious

Krook.

“Only a little,” Mr. Guppy explains.

The old man’s eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,

examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

“I say!” he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. “Somebody’s been

making free here!”

“I assure you we found it so,” says Mr. Guppy. “Would you allow me to

get it filled for you?”

“Yes, certainly I would!” cries Krook in high glee. “Certainly I

would! Don’t mention it! Get it filled next door—Sol’s Arms—the

Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!”

He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,

with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and

hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in

his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.

“But, I say,” he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting

it, “this ain’t the Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. This is

eighteenpenny!”

“I thought you might like that better,” says Mr. Guppy.

“You’re a nobleman, sir,” returns Krook with another taste, and his

hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. “You’re a baron

of the land.”

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his

friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object

of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets

beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time

to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. “You’d

like to see the room, young man?” he says. “Ah! It’s a good room!

Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It’s

worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and

such a cat to keep the mice away.”

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them

upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and

also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up

from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded—for

the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as he is

with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims

on his professional consideration—and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle

shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy then

repair to Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal

introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected and (more

important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are secured. They

then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office

in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Guppy explaining

that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at

the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would

render it a hollow mockery.

On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at

Krook’s, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself

in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him

in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day

Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow,

borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his

landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and

knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups,

milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like

a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.

But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next

after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only

whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of

copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities

of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies

of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined

with capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent

portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion

among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the

Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress,

plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of

dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every

variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.

But fashion is Mr. Weevle’s, as it was Tony Jobling’s, weakness. To

borrow yesterday’s paper from the Sol’s Arms of an evening and read

about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting

across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable

consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and

distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished

feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant

and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of

joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is

about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the

tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become

acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle

reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated,

and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.

For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices

as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to

carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of

evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not

visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in

a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room—where he has inherited the

deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink—and talks to

Krook or is “very free,” as they call it in the court, commendingly,

with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who

leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins:

firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish ’em

to be identically like that young man’s; and secondly, “Mark my

words, Mrs. Perkins, ma’am, and don’t you be surprised, Lord bless

you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook’s money!”