CHAPTER V

A Morning Adventure

Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed

heavy—I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that

they would have made midsummer sunshine dim—I was sufficiently

forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and

sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part

of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.

“Ma won’t be down for ever so long,” she said, “and then it’s a

chance if breakfast’s ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.

As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has

what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the

loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there

isn’t any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I’m afraid you

must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to

bed.”

“I am not at all tired, my dear,” said I, “and would much prefer to

go out.”

“If you’re sure you would,” returned Miss Jellyby, “I’ll get my

things on.”

Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to

Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that

he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed

again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at

me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never

could again be, so astonished in his life—looking very miserable

also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep

as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such

a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely

to notice it.

What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting

myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found

Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room,

which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick,

throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as

we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so.

Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been

left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over

the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings;

the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out

of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us,

that she had been to see what o’clock it was.

But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and

down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see

us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he

took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention

that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I

really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told

me so.

“Where would you wish to go?” she asked.

“Anywhere, my dear,” I replied.

“Anywhere’s nowhere,” said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.

“Let us go somewhere at any rate,” said I.

She then walked me on very fast.

“I don’t care!” she said. “Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I

say I don’t care—but if he was to come to our house with his great,

shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as

Methuselah, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he

and Ma make of themselves!”

“My dear!” I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the

vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. “Your duty as a child—”

“Oh! Don’t talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where’s Ma’s duty

as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then

let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it’s much more their

affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I

shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there’s an end of it!”

She walked me on faster yet.

“But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and

I won’t have anything to say to him. I can’t bear him. If there’s any

stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it’s the stuff he and Ma

talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the

patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and

contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma’s management!”

I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young

gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the

disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada

coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run

a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked

moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and

varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and

fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy

preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping

out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly

groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.

“So, cousin,” said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.

“We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to

our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here’s the

old lady again!”

Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and

smiling, and saying with her yesterday’s air of patronage, “The wards

in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!”

“You are out early, ma’am,” said I as she curtsied to me.

“Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It’s

retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,”

said the old lady mincingly. “The business of the day requires a

great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to

follow.”

“Who’s this, Miss Summerson?” whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm

tighter through her own.

The little old lady’s hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for

herself directly.

“A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend

court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing

another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?” said the old lady,

recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low

curtsy.

Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,

good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the

suit.

“Ha!” said the old lady. “She does not expect a judgment? She will

still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of

Lincoln’s Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the

summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater

part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long

vacation exceedingly long, don’t you?”

We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.

“When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more

flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor’s

court,” said the old lady, “the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth

seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see

my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and

beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a

visit from either.”

She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned

Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and

looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and

all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she

continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our

strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling

condescension, that she lived close by.

It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we

had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she

was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady

stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some

courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said,

“This is my lodging. Pray walk up!”

She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND

BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE

STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill

at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In

another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF

BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.

In another, LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything

seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the

window were quantities of dirty bottles—blacking bottles, medicine

bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine

bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the

shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal

neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and

disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles.

There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the

door, labelled “Law Books, all at 9d.” Some of the inscriptions I

have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen

in Kenge and Carboy’s office and the letters I had so long received

from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having

nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a

respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to

execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr.

Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red,

hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old

crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog’s-eared

law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which

there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once

belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers’ offices. The

litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged

wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might

have been counsellors’ bands and gowns torn up. One had only to

fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking

in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very

clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.

As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides

by the wall of Lincoln’s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple

of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern

that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in

the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was

short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between

his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth

as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so

frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin

that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of

snow.

“Hi, hi!” said the old man, coming to the door. “Have you anything to

sell?”

We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been

trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her

pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure

of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for

time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so

fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would

walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her

harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired,

that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to

comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when

the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, “Aye, aye! Please

her! It won’t take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the

shop if t’other door’s out of order!” we all went in, stimulated by

Richard’s laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.

“My landlord, Krook,” said the little old lady, condescending to him

from her lofty station as she presented him to us. “He is called

among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the

Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh,

I assure you he is very odd!”

She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with

her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse

him, “For he is a little—you know—M!” said the old lady with great

stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.

“It’s true enough,” he said, going before us with the lantern, “that

they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why

do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?”

“I don’t know, I am sure!” said Richard rather carelessly.

“You see,” said the old man, stopping and turning round, “they—Hi!

Here’s lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies’ hair below, but

none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!”

“That’ll do, my good friend!” said Richard, strongly disapproving of

his having drawn one of Ada’s tresses through his yellow hand. “You

can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty.”

The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my

attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably

beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the

little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said

she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook

shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.

“You see, I have so many things here,” he resumed, holding up the

lantern, “of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY

know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that’s

why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many

old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust

and must and cobwebs. And all’s fish that comes to my net. And I

can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my

neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to

have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on

about me. That’s the way I’ve got the ill name of Chancery. I don’t

mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day,

when he sits in the Inn. He don’t notice me, but I notice him.

There’s no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi,

Lady Jane!”

A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder

and startled us all.

“Hi! Show ’em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!” said her master.

The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish

claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.

“She’d do as much for any one I was to set her on,” said the old man.

“I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was

offered to me. It’s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn’t

have it stripped off! THAT warn’t like Chancery practice though, says

you!”

He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in

the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his

hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him

before passing out, “That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are

tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare

myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the

wards in Jarndyce.”

“Jarndyce!” said the old man with a start.

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook,” returned his lodger.

“Hi!” exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and

with a wider stare than before. “Think of it!”

He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that

Richard said, “Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about

the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other

Chancellor!”

“Yes,” said the old man abstractedly. “Sure! YOUR name now will be—”

“Richard Carstone.”

“Carstone,” he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his

forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a

separate finger. “Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of

Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.”

“He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!” said

Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.

“Aye!” said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. “Yes!

Tom Jarndyce—you’ll excuse me, being related; but he was never known

about court by any other name, and was as well known there as—she is

now,” nodding slightly at his lodger. “Tom Jarndyce was often in

here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause

was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling

’em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. ‘For,’ says he, ‘it’s

being ground to bits in a slow mill; it’s being roasted at a slow

fire; it’s being stung to death by single bees; it’s being drowned by

drops; it’s going mad by grains.’ He was as near making away with

himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be.”

We listened with horror.

“He come in at the door,” said the old man, slowly pointing an

imaginary track along the shop, “on the day he did it—the whole

neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a

certainty sooner or later—he come in at the door that day, and

walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and

asked me (you’ll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch

him a pint of wine. ‘For,’ says he, ‘Krook, I am much depressed; my

cause is on again, and I think I’m nearer judgment than I ever was.’

I hadn’t a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the

tavern over the way there, t’other side my lane (I mean Chancery

Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him,

comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company

with him. I hadn’t hardly got back here when I heard a shot go

echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out—neighbours

ran out—twenty of us cried at once, ‘Tom Jarndyce!’”

The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,

blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.

“We were right, I needn’t tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure,

how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the

cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of

’em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they

hadn’t heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they

had—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of

it by any chance!”

Ada’s colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less

pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no

party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock

to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the

minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another

uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor

half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise,

she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way

upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior

creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was

“a little—M—, you know!”

She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which

she had a glimpse of Lincoln’s Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her

principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.

She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the

moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the

scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from

books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and

some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, “containing documents,” as

she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and

I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a

shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so

forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in

her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had

understood before.

“Extremely honoured, I am sure,” said our poor hostess with the

greatest suavity, “by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very

much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I

am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of

attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my

days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights

long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course,

unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.

I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on

a superior footing. At present, I don’t mind confessing to the wards

in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult

to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have

felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse

the introduction of such mean topics.”

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and

called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some

containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and

goldfinches—I should think at least twenty.

“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object

that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of

restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es!

They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so

short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the

whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know,

whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be

free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?”

Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a

reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no

one but herself was present.

“Indeed,” she pursued, “I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure

you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or

Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and

senseless here, as I have found so many birds!”

Richard, answering what he saw in Ada’s compassionate eyes, took the

opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the

chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine

the birds.

“I can’t allow them to sing much,” said the little old lady, “for

(you’ll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that

they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my

mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I’ll tell

you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they

shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,” a smile and

curtsy, “hope,” a smile and curtsy, “and beauty,” a smile and curtsy.

“There! We’ll let in the full light.”

The birds began to stir and chirp.

“I cannot admit the air freely,” said the little old lady—the room

was close, and would have been the better for it—“because the cat

you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She

crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have

discovered,” whispering mysteriously, “that her natural cruelty is

sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In

consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly

and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat,

but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her

from the door.”

Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was

half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to

an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly

took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the

table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On

our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she

opened the door to attend us downstairs.

“With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I

should be there before the Chancellor comes in,” said she, “for he

might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he

WILL mention it the first thing this morning.”

She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the

whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had

bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a

little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous

stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door

there.

“The only other lodger,” she now whispered in explanation, “a

law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to

the devil. I don’t know what he can have done with the money. Hush!”

She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,

and repeating “Hush!” went before us on tiptoe as though even the

sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.

Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it

on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of

waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working

hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece

of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or

bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.

Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone

by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and

chalked the letter J upon the wall—in a very curious manner,

beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was

a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any

clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s office would have made.

“Can you read it?” he asked me with a keen glance.

“Surely,” said I. “It’s very plain.”

“What is it?”

“J.”

With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out

and turned an “a” in its place (not a capital letter this time), and

said, “What’s that?”

I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter “r,” and

asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in

the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the

letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the

wall together.

“What does that spell?” he asked me.

When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same

rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters

forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also

read; and he laughed again.

“Hi!” said the old man, laying aside the chalk. “I have a turn for

copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor

write.”

He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if

I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite

relieved by Richard’s appearing at the door and saying, “Miss

Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.

Don’t be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!”

I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my

friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave

us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of

yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada

and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back

and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles,

looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail

sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.

“Quite an adventure for a morning in London!” said Richard with a

sigh. “Ah, cousin, cousin, it’s a weary word this Chancery!”

“It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember,” returned Ada.

“I am grieved that I should be the enemy—as I suppose I am—of a

great number of relations and others, and that they should be my

enemies—as I suppose they are—and that we should all be ruining one

another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and

discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right

somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to

find out through all these years where it is.”

“Ah, cousin!” said Richard. “Strange, indeed! All this wasteful,

wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court

yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of

the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both

together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were

neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could

possibly be either. But at all events, Ada—I may call you Ada?”

“Of course you may, cousin Richard.”

“At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US.

We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,

and it can’t divide us now!”

“Never, I hope, cousin Richard!” said Ada gently.

Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I

smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very

pleasantly.

In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the

course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast

straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs.

Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she

presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly

occupied during breakfast, for the morning’s post brought a heavy

correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her

(she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and

notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were

perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour

and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The

equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both his absence and

his restoration to the family circle surprised us all.

She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was

fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At

one o’clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our

luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good

friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me

in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps;

Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of

separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate

market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the

barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered

over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts.