Чарльз Диккенс
The Old Curiosity Shop
CHAPTER 34
In course of time, that is to say, after a couple of hours or so, of diligent application, Miss Brass arrived at the conclusion of her task, and recorded the fact by wiping her pen upon the green gown, and taking a pinch of snuff from a little round tin box which she carried in her pocket. Having disposed of this temperate refreshment, she arose from her stool, tied her papers into a formal packet with red tape, and taking them under her arm, marched out of the office.
Mr Swiveller had scarcely sprung off his seat and commenced the performance of a maniac hornpipe, when he was interrupted, in the fulness of his joy at being again alone, by the opening of the door, and the reappearance of Miss Sally’s head.
‘I am going out,’ said Miss Brass.
‘Very good, ma’am,’ returned Dick. ‘And don’t hurry yourself on my account to come back, ma’am,’ he added inwardly.
‘If anybody comes on office business, take their messages, and say that the gentleman who attends to that matter isn’t in at present, will you?’ said Miss Brass.
‘I will, ma’am,’ replied Dick.
‘I shan’t be very long,’ said Miss Brass, retiring.
‘I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am,’ rejoined Dick when she had shut the door. ‘I hope you may be unexpectedly detained, ma’am. If you could manage to be run over, ma’am, but not seriously, so much the better.’
Uttering these expressions of good-will with extreme gravity, Mr Swiveller sat down in the client’s chair and pondered; then took a few turns up and down the room and fell into the chair again.
‘So I’m Brass’s clerk, am I?’ said Dick. ‘Brass’s clerk, eh? And the clerk of Brass’s sister – clerk to a female Dragon. Very good, very good! What shall I be next? Shall I be a convict in a felt hat and a grey suit, trotting about a dockyard with my number neatly embroidered on my uniform, and the order of the garter on my leg, restrained from chafing my ankle by a twisted belcher handkerchief? Shall I be that? Will that do, or is it too genteel? Whatever you please, have it your own way, of course.’
As he was entirely alone, it may be presumed that, in these remarks, Mr Swiveller addressed himself to his fate or destiny, whom, as we learn by the precedents, it is the custom of heroes to taunt in a very bitter and ironical manner when they find themselves in situations of an unpleasant nature. This is the more probable from the circumstance of Mr Swiveller directing his observations to the ceiling, which these bodily personages are usually supposed to inhabit – except in theatrical cases, when they live in the heart of the great chandelier.
‘Quilp offers me this place, which he says he can insure me,’ resumed Dick after a thoughtful silence, and telling off the circumstances of his position, one by one, upon his fingers; ‘Fred, who, I could have taken my affidavit, would not have heard of such a thing, backs Quilp to my astonishment, and urges me to take it also – staggerer, number one! My aunt in the country stops the supplies, and writes an affectionate note to say that she has made a new will, and left me out of it – staggerer, number two. No money; no credit; no support from Fred, who seems to turn steady all at once; notice to quit the old lodgings – staggerers, three, four, five, and six! Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again. Then I’m very glad that mine has brought all this upon itself, and I shall be as careless as I can, and make myself quite at home to spite it. So go on my buck,’ said Mr Swiveller, taking his leave of the ceiling with a significant nod, ‘and let us see which of us will be tired first!’
Dismissing the subject of his downfall with these reflections, which were no doubt very profound, and are indeed not altogether unknown in certain systems of moral philosophy, Mr Swiveller shook off his despondency and assumed the cheerful ease of an irresponsible clerk.
As a means towards his composure and self-possession, he entered into a more minute examination of the office than he had yet had time to make; looked into the wig-box, the books, and ink-bottle; untied and inspected all the papers; carved a few devices on the table with a sharp blade of Mr Brass’s penknife; and wrote his name on the inside of the wooden coal-scuttle. Having, as it were, taken formal possession of his clerkship in virtue of these proceedings, he opened the window and leaned negligently out of it until a beer-boy happened to pass, whom he commanded to set down his tray and to serve him with a pint of mild porter, which he drank upon the spot and promptly paid for, with the view of breaking ground for a system of future credit and opening a correspondence tending thereto, without loss of time. Then, three or four little boys dropped in, on legal errands from three or four attorneys of the Brass grade: whom Mr Swiveller received and dismissed with about as professional a manner, and as correct and comprehensive an understanding of their business, as would have been shown by a clown in a pantomime under similar circumstances. These things done and over, he got upon his stool again and tried his hand at drawing caricatures of Miss Brass with a pen and ink, whistling very cheerfully all the time.
He was occupied in this diversion when a coach stopped near the door, and presently afterwards there was a loud double-knock. As this was no business of Mr Swiveller’s, the person not ringing the office bell, he pursued his diversion with perfect composure, notwithstanding that he rather thought there was nobody else in the house.
In this, however, he was mistaken; for, after the knock had been repeated with increased impatience, the door was opened, and somebody with a very heavy tread went up the stairs and into the room above. Mr Swiveller was wondering whether this might be another Miss Brass, twin sister to the Dragon, when there came a rapping of knuckles at the office door.
‘Come in!’ said Dick. ‘Don’t stand upon ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I’ve many more customers. Come in!’
‘Oh, please,’ said a little voice very low down in the doorway, ‘will you come and show the lodgings?’
Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.
‘Why, who are you?’ said Dick.
To which the only reply was, ‘Oh, please will you come and show the lodgings?’
There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.
‘I hav’n’t got anything to do with the lodgings,’ said Dick. ‘Tell ‘em to call again.’
‘Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings,’ returned the girl; ‘It’s eighteen shillings a week and us finding plate and linen. Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day.’
‘Why don’t you show ‘em yourself? You seem to know all about ‘em,’ said Dick.
‘Miss Sally said I wasn’t to, because people wouldn’t believe the attendance was good if they saw how small I was first.’
‘Well, but they’ll see how small you are afterwards, won’t they?’ said Dick.
‘Ah! But then they’ll have taken ‘em for a fortnight certain,’ replied the child with a shrewd look; ‘and people don’t like moving when they’re once settled.’
‘This is a queer sort of thing,’ muttered Dick, rising. ‘What do you mean to say you are – the cook?’
‘Yes, I do plain cooking;’ replied the child. ‘I’m housemaid too; I do all the work of the house.’
‘I suppose Brass and the Dragon and I do the dirtiest part of it,’ thought Dick. And he might have thought much more, being in a doubtful and hesitating mood, but that the girl again urged her request, and certain mysterious bumping sounds on the passage and staircase seemed to give note of the applicant’s impatience. Richard Swiveller, therefore, sticking a pen behind each ear, and carrying another in his mouth as a token of his great importance and devotion to business, hurried out to meet and treat with the single gentleman.
He was a little surprised to perceive that the bumping sounds were occasioned by the progress up-stairs of the single gentleman’s trunk, which, being nearly twice as wide as the staircase, and exceedingly heavy withal, it was no easy matter for the united exertions of the single gentleman and the coachman to convey up the steep ascent. But there they were, crushing each other, and pushing and pulling with all their might, and getting the trunk tight and fast in all kinds of impossible angles, and to pass them was out of the question; for which sufficient reason, Mr Swiveller followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against the house of Mr Sampson Brass being thus taken by storm.
To these remonstrances, the single gentleman answered not a word, but when the trunk was at last got into the bed-room, sat down upon it and wiped his bald head and face with his handkerchief. He was very warm, and well he might be; for, not to mention the exertion of getting the trunk up stairs, he was closely muffled in winter garments, though the thermometer had stood all day at eighty-one in the shade.
‘I believe, sir,’ said Richard Swiveller, taking his pen out of his mouth, ‘that you desire to look at these apartments. They are very charming apartments, sir. They command an uninterrupted view of – of over the way, and they are within one minute’s walk of – of the corner of the street. There is exceedingly mild porter, sir, in the immediate vicinity, and the contingent advantages are extraordinary.’
‘What’s the rent?’ said the single gentleman.
‘One pound per week,’ replied Dick, improving on the terms.
‘I’ll take ‘em.’
‘The boots and clothes are extras,’ said Dick; ‘and the fires in winter time are – ’
‘Are all agreed to,’ answered the single gentleman.
‘Two weeks certain,’ said Dick, ‘are the – ’
‘Two weeks!’ cried the single gentleman gruffly, eyeing him from top to toe. ‘Two years. I shall live here for two years. Here. Ten pounds down. The bargain’s made.’
‘Why you see,’ said Dick, ‘my name is not Brass, and – ’
‘Who said it was? My name’s not Brass. What then?’
‘The name of the master of the house is,’ said Dick.
‘I’m glad of it,’ returned the single gentleman; ‘it’s a good name for a lawyer. Coachman, you may go. So may you, Sir.’
Mr Swiveller was so much confounded by the single gentleman riding roughshod over him at this rate, that he stood looking at him almost as hard as he had looked at Miss Sally. The single gentleman, however, was not in the slightest degree affected by this circumstance, but proceeded with perfect composure to unwind the shawl which was tied round his neck, and then to pull off his boots. Freed of these encumbrances, he went on to divest himself of his other clothing, which he folded up, piece by piece, and ranged in order on the trunk. Then, he pulled down the window-blinds, drew the curtains, wound up his watch, and, quite leisurely and methodically, got into bed.
‘Take down the bill,’ were his parting words, as he looked out from between the curtains; ‘and let nobody call me till I ring the bell.’
With that the curtains closed, and he seemed to snore immediately.
‘This is a most remarkable and supernatural sort of house!’ said Mr Swiveller, as he walked into the office with the bill in his hand. ‘She-dragons in the business, conducting themselves like professional gentlemen; plain cooks of three feet high appearing mysteriously from under ground; strangers walking in and going to bed without leave or licence in the middle of the day! If he should be one of the miraculous fellows that turn up now and then, and has gone to sleep for two years, I shall be in a pleasant situation. It’s my destiny, however, and I hope Brass may like it. I shall be sorry if he don’t. But it’s no business of mine – I have nothing whatever to do with it!’
CHAPTER 35
Mr Brass on returning home received the report of his clerk with much complacency and satisfaction, and was particular in inquiring after the ten-pound note, which, proving on examination to be a good and lawful note of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, increased his good-humour considerably. Indeed he so overflowed with liberality and condescension, that, in the fulness of his heart, he invited Mr Swiveller to partake of a bowl of punch with him at that remote and indefinite period which is currently denominated ‘one of these days,’ and paid him many handsome compliments on the uncommon aptitude for business which his conduct on the first day of his devotion to it had so plainly evinced.
It was a maxim with Mr Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions. And this had passed into such a habit with him, that, if he could not be correctly said to have his tongue at his fingers’ ends, he might certainly be said to have it anywhere but in his face: which being, as we have already seen, of a harsh and repulsive character, was not oiled so easily, but frowned above all the smooth speeches – one of nature’s beacons, warning off those who navigated the shoals and breakers of the World, or of that dangerous strait the Law, and admonishing them to seek less treacherous harbours and try their fortune elsewhere.
While Mr Brass by turns overwhelmed his clerk with compliments and inspected the ten-pound note, Miss Sally showed little emotion and that of no pleasurable kind, for as the tendency of her legal practice had been to fix her thoughts on small gains and gripings, and to whet and sharpen her natural wisdom, she was not a little disappointed that the single gentleman had obtained the lodgings at such an easy rate, arguing that when he was seen to have set his mind upon them, he should have been at the least charged double or treble the usual terms, and that, in exact proportion as he pressed forward, Mr Swiveller should have hung back. But neither the good opinion of Mr Brass, nor the dissatisfaction of Miss Sally, wrought any impression upon that young gentleman, who, throwing the responsibility of this and all other acts and deeds thereafter to be done by him, upon his unlucky destiny, was quite resigned and comfortable: fully prepared for the worst, and philosophically indifferent to the best.
‘Good morning, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, on the second day of Mr Swiveller’s clerkship. ‘Sally found you a second-hand stool, Sir, yesterday evening, in Whitechapel. She’s a rare fellow at a bargain, I can tell you, Mr Richard. You’ll find that a first-rate stool, Sir, take my word for it.’
‘It’s rather a crazy one to look at,’ said Dick.
‘You’ll find it a most amazing stool to sit down upon, you may depend,’ returned Mr Brass. ‘It was bought in the open street just opposite the hospital, and as it has been standing there a month of two, it has got rather dusty and a little brown from being in the sun, that’s all.’
‘I hope it hasn’t got any fevers or anything of that sort in it,’ said Dick, sitting himself down discontentedly, between Mr Sampson and the chaste Sally. ‘One of the legs is longer than the others.’
‘Then we get a bit of timber in, Sir,’ retorted Brass. ‘Ha, ha, ha! We get a bit of timber in, Sir, and that’s another advantage of my sister’s going to market for us. Miss Brass, Mr Richard is the – ’
‘Will you keep quiet?’ interrupted the fair subject of these remarks, looking up from her papers. ‘How am I to work if you keep on chattering?’
‘What an uncertain chap you are!’ returned the lawyer. ‘Sometimes you’re all for a chat. At another time you’re all for work. A man never knows what humour he’ll find you in.’
‘I’m in a working humour now,’ said Sally, ‘so don’t disturb me, if you please. And don’t take him,’ Miss Sally pointed with the feather of her pen to Richard, ‘off his business. He won’t do more than he can help, I dare say.’
Mr Brass had evidently a strong inclination to make an angry reply, but was deterred by prudent or timid considerations, as he only muttered something about aggravation and a vagabond; not associating the terms with any individual, but mentioning them as connected with some abstract ideas which happened to occur to him. They went on writing for a long time in silence after this – in such a dull silence that Mr Swiveller (who required excitement) had several times fallen asleep, and written divers strange words in an unknown character with his eyes shut, when Miss Sally at length broke in upon the monotony of the office by pulling out the little tin box, taking a noisy pinch of snuff, and then expressing her opinion that Mr Richard Swiveller had ‘done it.’
‘Done what, ma’am?’ said Richard.
‘Do you know,’ returned Miss Brass, ‘that the lodger isn’t up yet – that nothing has been seen or heard of him since he went to bed yesterday afternoon?’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Dick, ‘I suppose he may sleep his ten pound out, in peace and quietness, if he likes.’
‘Ah! I begin to think he’ll never wake,’ observed Miss Sally.
‘It’s a very remarkable circumstance,’ said Brass, laying down his pen; ‘really, very remarkable. Mr Richard, you’ll remember, if this gentleman should be found to have hung himself to the bed-post, or any unpleasant accident of that kind should happen – you’ll remember, Mr Richard, that this ten pound note was given to you in part payment of two years’ rent? You’ll bear that in mind, Mr Richard; you had better make a note of it, sir, in case you should ever be called upon to give evidence.’
Mr Swiveller took a large sheet of foolscap, and with a countenance of profound gravity, began to make a very small note in one corner.
‘We can never be too cautious,’ said Mr Brass. ‘There is a deal of wickedness going about the world, a deal of wickedness. Did the gentleman happen to say, Sir – but never mind that at present, sir; finish that little memorandum first.’
Dick did so, and handed it to Mr Brass, who had dismounted from his stool, and was walking up and down the office.
‘Oh, this is the memorandum, is it?’ said Brass, running his eye over the document. ‘Very good. Now, Mr Richard, did the gentleman say anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, solemnly, ‘that the gentleman said nothing else?’
‘Devil a word, Sir,’ replied Dick.
‘Think again, Sir,’ said Brass; ‘it’s my duty, Sir, in the position in which I stand, and as an honourable member of the legal profession – the first profession in this country, Sir, or in any other country, or in any of the planets that shine above us at night and are supposed to be inhabited – it’s my duty, Sir, as an honourable member of that profession, not to put to you a leading question in a matter of this delicacy and importance. Did the gentleman, Sir, who took the first floor of you yesterday afternoon, and who brought with him a box of property – a box of property – say anything more than is set down in this memorandum?’
‘Come, don’t be a fool,’ said Miss Sally.
Dick looked at her, and then at Brass, and then at Miss Sally again, and still said ‘No.’
‘Pooh, pooh! Deuce take it, Mr Richard, how dull you are!’ cried Brass, relaxing into a smile. ‘Did he say anything about his property? – there!’
‘That’s the way to put it,’ said Miss Sally, nodding to her brother.
‘Did he say, for instance,’ added Brass, in a kind of comfortable, cozy tone – ‘I don’t assert that he did say so, mind; I only ask you, to refresh your memory – did he say, for instance, that he was a stranger in London – that it was not his humour or within his ability to give any references – that he felt we had a right to require them – and that, in case anything should happen to him, at any time, he particularly desired that whatever property he had upon the premises should be considered mine, as some slight recompense for the trouble and annoyance I should sustain – and were you, in short,’ added Brass, still more comfortably and cozily than before, ‘were you induced to accept him on my behalf, as a tenant, upon those conditions?’
‘Certainly not,’ replied Dick.
‘Why then, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, darting at him a supercilious and reproachful look, ‘it’s my opinion that you’ve mistaken your calling, and will never make a lawyer.’
‘Not if you live a thousand years,’ added Miss Sally. Whereupon the brother and sister took each a noisy pinch of snuff from the little tin box, and fell into a gloomy thoughtfulness.
Nothing further passed up to Mr Swiveller’s dinner-time, which was at three o’clock, and seemed about three weeks in coming. At the first stroke of the hour, the new clerk disappeared. At the last stroke of five, he reappeared, and the office, as if by magic, became fragrant with the smell of gin and water and lemon-peel.
‘Mr Richard,’ said Brass, ‘this man’s not up yet. Nothing will wake him, sir. What’s to be done?’
‘I should let him have his sleep out,’ returned Dick.
‘Sleep out!’ cried Brass; ‘why he has been asleep now, six-and-twenty hours. We have been moving chests of drawers over his head, we have knocked double knocks at the street-door, we have made the servant-girl fall down stairs several times (she’s a light weight, and it don’t hurt her much,) but nothing wakes him.’
‘Perhaps a ladder,’ suggested Dick, ‘and getting in at the first-floor window – ’
‘But then there’s a door between; besides, the neighbours would be up in arms,’ said Brass.
‘What do you say to getting on the roof of the house through the trap-door, and dropping down the chimney?’ suggested Dick.
‘That would be an excellent plan,’ said Brass, ‘if anybody would be – ’ and here he looked very hard at Mr Swiveller – ‘would be kind, and friendly, and generous enough, to undertake it. I dare say it would not be anything like as disagreeable as one supposes.’
Dick had made the suggestion, thinking that the duty might possibly fall within Miss Sally’s department. As he said nothing further, and declined taking the hint, Mr Brass was fain to propose that they should go up stairs together, and make a last effort to awaken the sleeper by some less violent means, which, if they failed on this last trial, must positively be succeeded by stronger measures. Mr Swiveller, assenting, armed himself with his stool and the large ruler, and repaired with his employer to the scene of action, where Miss Brass was already ringing a hand-bell with all her might, and yet without producing the smallest effect upon their mysterious lodger.
‘There are his boots, Mr Richard!’ said Brass.
‘Very obstinate-looking articles they are too,’ quoth Richard Swiveller. And truly, they were as sturdy and bluff a pair of boots as one would wish to see; as firmly planted on the ground as if their owner’s legs and feet had been in them; and seeming, with their broad soles and blunt toes, to hold possession of their place by main force.
‘I can’t see anything but the curtain of the bed,’ said Brass, applying his eye to the keyhole of the door. ‘Is he a strong man, Mr Richard?’
‘Very,’ answered Dick.
‘It would be an extremely unpleasant circumstance if he was to bounce out suddenly,’ said Brass. ‘Keep the stairs clear. I should be more than a match for him, of course, but I’m the master of the house, and the laws of hospitality must be respected. – Hallo there! Hallo, hallo!’
While Mr Brass, with his eye curiously twisted into the keyhole, uttered these sounds as a means of attracting the lodger’s attention, and while Miss Brass plied the hand-bell, Mr Swiveller put his stool close against the wall by the side of the door, and mounting on the top and standing bolt upright, so that if the lodger did make a rush, he would most probably pass him in its onward fury, began a violent battery with the ruler upon the upper panels of the door. Captivated with his own ingenuity, and confident in the strength of his position, which he had taken up after the method of those hardy individuals who open the pit and gallery doors of theatres on crowded nights, Mr Swiveller rained down such a shower of blows, that the noise of the bell was drowned; and the small servant, who lingered on the stairs below, ready to fly at a moment’s notice, was obliged to hold her ears lest she should be rendered deaf for life.
Suddenly the door was unlocked on the inside, and flung violently open. The small servant flew to the coal-cellar; Miss Sally dived into her own bed-room; Mr Brass, who was not remarkable for personal courage, ran into the next street, and finding that nobody followed him, armed with a poker or other offensive weapon, put his hands in his pockets, walked very slowly all at once, and whistled.
Meanwhile, Mr Swiveller, on the top of the stool, drew himself into as flat a shape as possible against the wall, and looked, not unconcernedly, down upon the single gentleman, who appeared at the door growling and cursing in a very awful manner, and, with the boots in his hand, seemed to have an intention of hurling them down stairs on speculation. This idea, however, he abandoned. He was turning into his room again, still growling vengefully, when his eyes met those of the watchful Richard.
‘Have you been making that horrible noise?’ said the single gentleman.
‘I have been helping, sir,’ returned Dick, keeping his eye upon him, and waving the ruler gently in his right hand, as an indication of what the single gentleman had to expect if he attempted any violence.
‘How dare you then,’ said the lodger, ‘Eh?’
To this, Dick made no other reply than by inquiring whether the lodger held it to be consistent with the conduct and character of a gentleman to go to sleep for six-and-twenty hours at a stretch, and whether the peace of an amiable and virtuous family was to weigh as nothing in the balance.
‘Is my peace nothing?’ said the single gentleman.
‘Is their peace nothing, sir?’ returned Dick. ‘I don’t wish to hold out any threats, sir – indeed the law does not allow of threats, for to threaten is an indictable offence – but if ever you do that again, take care you’re not sat upon by the coroner and buried in a cross road before you wake. We have been distracted with fears that you were dead, Sir,’ said Dick, gently sliding to the ground, ‘and the short and the long of it is, that we cannot allow single gentlemen to come into this establishment and sleep like double gentlemen without paying extra for it.’
‘Indeed!’ cried the lodger.
‘Yes, Sir, indeed,’ returned Dick, yielding to his destiny and saying whatever came uppermost; ‘an equal quantity of slumber was never got out of one bed and bedstead, and if you’re going to sleep in that way, you must pay for a double-bedded room.’
Instead of being thrown into a greater passion by these remarks, the lodger lapsed into a broad grin and looked at Mr Swiveller with twinkling eyes. He was a brown-faced sun-burnt man, and appeared browner and more sun-burnt from having a white nightcap on. As it was clear that he was a choleric fellow in some respects, Mr Swiveller was relieved to find him in such good humour, and, to encourage him in it, smiled himself.
The lodger, in the testiness of being so rudely roused, had pushed his nightcap very much on one side of his bald head. This gave him a rakish eccentric air which, now that he had leisure to observe it, charmed Mr Swiveller exceedingly; therefore, by way of propitiation, he expressed his hope that the gentleman was going to get up, and further that he would never do so any more.
‘Come here, you impudent rascal!’ was the lodger’s answer as he re-entered his room.
Mr Swiveller followed him in, leaving the stool outside, but reserving the ruler in case of a surprise. He rather congratulated himself on his prudence when the single gentleman, without notice or explanation of any kind, double-locked the door.
‘Can you drink anything?’ was his next inquiry.
Mr Swiveller replied that he had very recently been assuaging the pangs of thirst, but that he was still open to ‘a modest quencher,’ if the materials were at hand. Without another word spoken on either side, the lodger took from his great trunk, a kind of temple, shining as of polished silver, and placed it carefully on the table.
Greatly interested in his proceedings, Mr Swiveller observed him closely. Into one little chamber of this temple, he dropped an egg; into another some coffee; into a third a compact piece of raw steak from a neat tin case; into a fourth, he poured some water. Then, with the aid of a phosphorus-box and some matches, he procured a light and applied it to a spirit-lamp which had a place of its own below the temple; then, he shut down the lids of all the little chambers; then he opened them; and then, by some wonderful and unseen agency, the steak was done, the egg was boiled, the coffee was accurately prepared, and his breakfast was ready.
‘Hot water – ’ said the lodger, handing it to Mr Swiveller with as much coolness as if he had a kitchen fire before him – ‘extraordinary rum – sugar – and a travelling glass. Mix for yourself. And make haste.’
Dick complied, his eyes wandering all the time from the temple on the table, which seemed to do everything, to the great trunk which seemed to hold everything. The lodger took his breakfast like a man who was used to work these miracles, and thought nothing of them.
‘The man of the house is a lawyer, is he not?’ said the lodger.
Dick nodded. The rum was amazing.
‘The woman of the house – what’s she?’
‘A dragon,’ said Dick.
The single gentleman, perhaps because he had met with such things in his travels, or perhaps because he was a single gentleman, evinced no surprise, but merely inquired ‘Wife or sister?’ – ‘Sister,’ said Dick. – ‘So much the better,’ said the single gentleman, ‘he can get rid of her when he likes.’
