CHAPTER XXII

Mr. Bucket

Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, though the

evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows are wide open, and

the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable

characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January

with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long

vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like

peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for

calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool

to-night.

Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows, and plenty more

has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick

everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way

takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as

much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law—or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one

of its trustiest representatives—may scatter, on occasion, in the

eyes of the laity.

In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which

his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth,

animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of

the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained

man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He

has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields,

which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as

he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken

brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the

echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote

reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an

earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant

nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to

find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of

southern grapes.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys

his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and

seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever,

he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at

that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with

darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in

town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his

family history, and his money, and his will—all a mystery to every

one—and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and

a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was

seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is

supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold

watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely

home to the Temple and hanged himself.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual

length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and

uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining

man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him

fill his glass.

“Now, Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “to go over this odd story

again.”

“If you please, sir.”

“You told me when you were so good as to step round here last

night—”

“For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but

I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person,

and I thought it possible that you might—just—wish—to—”

Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to

admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.

Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, “I must ask

you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.”

“Not at all,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “You told me, Snagsby, that you

put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to

your wife. That was prudent I think, because it’s not a matter of

such importance that it requires to be mentioned.”

“Well, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby, “you see, my little woman is—not

to put too fine a point upon it—inquisitive. She’s inquisitive. Poor

little thing, she’s liable to spasms, and it’s good for her to have

her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it—I should

say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it

concerns her or not—especially not. My little woman has a very

active mind, sir.”

Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his

hand, “Dear me, very fine wine indeed!”

“Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?” says Mr.

Tulkinghorn. “And to-night too?”

“Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in—not

to put too fine a point on it—in a pious state, or in what she

considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name

they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a

great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not

quite favourable to his style myself. That’s neither here nor there.

My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to

step round in a quiet manner.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. “Fill your glass, Snagsby.”

“Thank you, sir, I am sure,” returns the stationer with his cough of

deference. “This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!”

“It is a rare wine now,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It is fifty years

old.”

“Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It

might be—any age almost.” After rendering this general tribute to

the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his

hand for drinking anything so precious.

“Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?” asks Mr.

Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty

smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.

“With pleasure, sir.”

Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer

repeats Jo’s statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On

coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks

off with, “Dear me, sir, I wasn’t aware there was any other gentleman

present!”

Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face

between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a

person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he

himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of

the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not

creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third

person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in

his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener.

He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of

about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he

were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about

him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.

“Don’t mind this gentleman,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.

“This is only Mr. Bucket.”

“Oh, indeed, sir?” returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that

he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.

“I wanted him to hear this story,” says the lawyer, “because I have

half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very

intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?”

“It’s very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and

he’s not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don’t object to

go down with me to Tom-all-Alone’s and point him out, we can have him

here in less than a couple of hours’ time. I can do it without Mr.

Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way.”

“Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby,” says the lawyer in

explanation.

“Is he indeed, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his

clump of hair to stand on end.

“And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the

place in question,” pursues the lawyer, “I shall feel obliged to you

if you will do so.”

In a moment’s hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down

to the bottom of his mind.

“Don’t you be afraid of hurting the boy,” he says. “You won’t do

that. It’s all right as far as the boy’s concerned. We shall only

bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and

he’ll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It’ll be a good

job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent

away all right. Don’t you be afraid of hurting him; you an’t going to

do that.”

“Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!” cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And

reassured, “Since that’s the case—”

“Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby,” resumes Bucket, taking him aside

by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a

confidential tone. “You’re a man of the world, you know, and a man of

business, and a man of sense. That’s what YOU are.”

“I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion,” returns

the stationer with his cough of modesty, “but—”

“That’s what YOU are, you know,” says Bucket. “Now, it an’t necessary

to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a

business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his

senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in

your business once)—it an’t necessary to say to a man like you that

it’s the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet.

Don’t you see? Quiet!”

“Certainly, certainly,” returns the other.

“I don’t mind telling YOU,” says Bucket with an engaging appearance

of frankness, “that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be

a doubt whether this dead person wasn’t entitled to a little

property, and whether this female hasn’t been up to some games

respecting that property, don’t you see?”

“Oh!” says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.

“Now, what YOU want,” pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on

the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, “is that every

person should have their rights according to justice. That’s what YOU

want.”

“To be sure,” returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.

“On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a—do you call

it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used

to call it.”

“Why, I generally say customer myself,” replies Mr. Snagsby.

“You’re right!” returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite

affectionately. “—On account of which, and at the same time to

oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in

confidence, to Tom-all-Alone’s and to keep the whole thing quiet ever

afterwards and never mention it to any one. That’s about your

intentions, if I understand you?”

“You are right, sir. You are right,” says Mr. Snagsby.

“Then here’s your hat,” returns his new friend, quite as intimate

with it as if he had made it; “and if you’re ready, I am.”

They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his

unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the

streets.

“You don’t happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of

Gridley, do you?” says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend

the stairs.

“No,” says Mr. Snagsby, considering, “I don’t know anybody of that

name. Why?”

“Nothing particular,” says Bucket; “only having allowed his temper to

get a little the better of him and having been threatening some

respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have

got against him—which it’s a pity that a man of sense should do.”

As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however

quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some

undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is

going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed

purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply,

at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a

police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the

constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come

towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and

to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind

some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair

twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without

glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man,

looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket

notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great

mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not

much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.

When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone’s, Mr. Bucket stops for a

moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull’s-eye from the

constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own

particular bull’s-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr.

Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained,

unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water—though the roads

are dry elsewhere—and reeking with such smells and sights that he,

who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses.

Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets

and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and

feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal

gulf.

“Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby,” says Bucket as a kind of shabby

palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. “Here’s

the fever coming up the street!”

As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of

attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible

faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and

with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth

flits about them until they leave the place.

“Are those the fever-houses, Darby?” Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he

turns his bull’s-eye on a line of stinking ruins.

Darby replies that “all them are,” and further that in all, for

months and months, the people “have been down by dozens” and have

been carried out dead and dying “like sheep with the rot.” Bucket

observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little

poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn’t breathe

the dreadful air.

There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few

people are known in Tom-all-Alone’s by any Christian sign, there is

much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the

Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or

the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are

conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some

think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is

produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and

his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its

squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever

they move, and the angry bull’s-eyes glare, it fades away and flits

about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as

before.

At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject,

lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may

be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress

of the house—a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring

out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her

private apartment—leads to the establishment of this conclusion.

Toughy has gone to the doctor’s to get a bottle of stuff for a sick

woman but will be here anon.

“And who have we got here to-night?” says Mr. Bucket, opening another

door and glaring in with his bull’s-eye. “Two drunken men, eh? And

two women? The men are sound enough,” turning back each sleeper’s arm

from his face to look at him. “Are these your good men, my dears?”

“Yes, sir,” returns one of the women. “They are our husbands.”

“Brickmakers, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you doing here? You don’t belong to London.”

“No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.”

“Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?”

“Saint Albans.”

“Come up on the tramp?”

“We walked up yesterday. There’s no work down with us at present, but

we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect.”

“That’s not the way to do much good,” says Mr. Bucket, turning his

head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.

“It an’t indeed,” replies the woman with a sigh. “Jenny and me knows

it full well.”

The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low

that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the

blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every

sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted

air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of

table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit

by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a

very young child.

“Why, what age do you call that little creature?” says Bucket. “It

looks as if it was born yesterday.” He is not at all rough about it;

and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is

strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he

has seen in pictures.

“He is not three weeks old yet, sir,” says the woman.

“Is he your child?”

“Mine.”

The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops

down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.

“You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself,” says Mr.

Bucket.

“I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died.”

“Ah, Jenny, Jenny!” says the other woman to her. “Better so. Much

better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!”

“Why, you an’t such an unnatural woman, I hope,” returns Bucket

sternly, “as to wish your own child dead?”

“God knows you are right, master,” she returns. “I am not. I’d stand

between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any

pretty lady.”

“Then don’t talk in that wrong manner,” says Mr. Bucket, mollified

again. “Why do you do it?”

“It’s brought into my head, master,” returns the woman, her eyes

filling with tears, “when I look down at the child lying so. If it

was never to wake no more, you’d think me mad, I should take on so. I

know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers—warn’t I,

Jenny?—and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this

place. Look at them,” glancing at the sleepers on the ground. “Look

at the boy you’re waiting for, who’s gone out to do me a good turn.

Think of the children that your business lays with often and often,

and that YOU see grow up!”

“Well, well,” says Mr. Bucket, “you train him respectable, and he’ll

be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know.”

“I mean to try hard,” she answers, wiping her eyes. “But I have been

a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of

all the many things that’ll come in his way. My master will be

against it, and he’ll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his

home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and

ever so hard, there’s no one to help me; and if he should be turned

bad ‘spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should

sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an’t it likely I

should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as

Jenny’s child died!”

“There, there!” says Jenny. “Liz, you’re tired and ill. Let me take

him.”

In doing so, she displaces the mother’s dress, but quickly readjusts

it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.

“It’s my dead child,” says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses,

“that makes me love this child so dear, and it’s my dead child that

makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken

away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would

I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we

knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!”

As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a

step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway

and says to Mr. Snagsby, “Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE

do?”

“That’s Jo,” says Mr. Snagsby.

Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a

magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the

law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving

him the consolatory assurance, “It’s only a job you will be paid for,

Jo,” he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a

little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though

out of breath.

“I have squared it with the lad,” says Mr. Bucket, returning, “and

it’s all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we’re ready for you.”

First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over

the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic

verbal direction that “it’s to be all took d’rectly.” Secondly, Mr.

Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for

an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo

by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him,

without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other

Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come

out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone’s.

By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they

gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and

skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration

of the bull’s-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse

of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.

Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to

Mr. Snagsby’s mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr.

Tulkinghorn’s gate.

As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers being on

the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the

outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man

so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the

door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of

preparation.

Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,

and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn’s usual room—the room where he drank his

old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned

candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.

Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to

Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little

way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.

“What’s the matter?” says Bucket in a whisper.

“There she is!” cries Jo.

“Who!”

“The lady!”

A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,

where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The

front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their

entrance and remains like a statue.

“Now, tell me,” says Bucket aloud, “how you know that to be the

lady.”

“I know the wale,” replies Jo, staring, “and the bonnet, and the

gownd.”

“Be quite sure of what you say, Tough,” returns Bucket, narrowly

observant of him. “Look again.”

“I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look,” says Jo with starting

eyes, “and that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd.”

“What about those rings you told me of?” asks Bucket.

“A-sparkling all over here,” says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left

hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the

figure.

The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.

“Now, what do you say to that?” asks Bucket.

Jo shakes his head. “Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like

that.”

“What are you talking of?” says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and

well pleased too.

“Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,”

returns Jo.

“Why, you’ll tell me I’m my own mother next,” says Mr. Bucket. “Do

you recollect the lady’s voice?”

“I think I does,” says Jo.

The figure speaks. “Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as

you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this

voice?”

Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. “Not a bit!”

“Then, what,” retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, “did you

say it was the lady for?”

“Cos,” says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken

in his certainty, “cos that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the

gownd. It is her and it an’t her. It an’t her hand, nor yet her

rings, nor yet her woice. But that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and

the gownd, and they’re wore the same way wot she wore ’em, and it’s

her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it.”

“Well!” says Mr. Bucket slightly, “we haven’t got much good out of

YOU. But, however, here’s five shillings for you. Take care how you

spend it, and don’t get yourself into trouble.” Bucket stealthily

tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters—which is

a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of

skill—and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy’s hand and

takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means

comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the

veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn’s coming into the room, the

veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is

revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his

usual equanimity. “I will give you no further trouble about this

little wager.”

“You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at

present placed?” says mademoiselle.

“Certainly, certainly!”

“And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished

recommendation?”

“By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense.”

“A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful.”

“It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle.”

“Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir.”

“Good night.”

Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.

Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the

ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not

without gallantry.

“Well, Bucket?” quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.

“It’s all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an’t a

doubt that it was the other one with this one’s dress on. The boy was

exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you

as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don’t say it wasn’t

done!”

“You have kept your word, sir,” returns the stationer; “and if I can

be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman

will be getting anxious—”

“Thank you, Snagsby, no further use,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I am

quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already.”

“Not at all, sir. I wish you good night.”

“You see, Mr. Snagsby,” says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door

and shaking hands with him over and over again, “what I like in you

is that you’re a man it’s of no use pumping; that’s what YOU are.

When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it’s

done with and gone, and there’s an end of it. That’s what YOU do.”

“That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby.

“No, you don’t do yourself justice. It an’t what you endeavour to

do,” says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the

tenderest manner, “it’s what you DO. That’s what I estimate in a man

in your way of business.”

Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused

by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake

and out—doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he

goes—doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He

is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable

reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect

beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to

the police-station with official intelligence of her husband’s being

made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through

every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little

woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!