Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?


More and most, my dear, are words it’s not my place to use—nor so much as to hear—applied to any drawback on my Lady.


I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?


If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always reason to be.


Well, it’s to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!


Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking.


Sir Leicester is no joke by any means, and I humbly ask his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller might?


Surely, none in the world, child.


I am glad of that, because I have an inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.


Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady’s service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed—absolutely caressed—by my Lady on the moment of her arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! And do you know how pretty you are, child? No, my Lady. And how old are you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child! It is the BEST thing altogether.


Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?


No, my Lady, not yet.


Be so good as to attend, to your business. You can contemplate your beauty at another time.


Pardon! It was your Ladyship’s beauty.


That, you needn’t contemplate at all.


How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn? We expected you before. Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!


I should have come down sooner, but that I have been much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself and Boythorn.


A man of a very ill-regulated mind. An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a very low character of mind.


He is obstinate,


It is natural to such a man to be so. I am not at all surprised to hear it.


The only question is, whether you will give up anything.


No, sir. Nothing. I give up?


I don’t mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you would not abandon. I mean any minor point.


Mr. Tulkinghorn, there can be no minor point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.


I have now my instructions. Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble—


It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn. TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished—if not, if not hanged, drawn, and quartered. But night is coming on, and my Lady will take cold. My dear, let us go in.


You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can’t imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely had some.


You had some?


Oh, yes! I think I must have had some. And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that actual thing—what is it!—affidavit?


Yes.


How very odd!


Yes. I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him—


Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!


I found him dead.


Oh, dear me!


I was directed to his lodging—a miserable, poverty-stricken place—and I found him dead.


You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn. I think the less said—


Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?


Whether by his own hand—


Upon my honour! Really!


Do let me hear the story!


Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say—


No, you mustn’t say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn.


I was about to say, that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be known. The coroner’s jury found that he took the poison accidentally.


And what kind of man, was this deplorable creature?


Very difficult to say. He had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition.


What did they call the wretched being?


They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name.


Not even any one who had attended on him?


No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him.


Without any clue to anything more?


Without any; there was, an old portmanteau, but—No, there were no papers.


Certainly, a collection of horrors, but they interest one for the moment! Have the kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.


How much of this indecision of character, is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don’t pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off—and trusting to this, that, and the other chance, without knowing what chance—and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy’s, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and escape them.


I haven’t the least idea, what I had better be. Except that I am quite sure I don’t want to go into the Church, it’s a toss-up.


You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge’s way?


I don’t know that, sir! I am fond of boating. Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It’s a capital profession!


Surgeon—


That’s the thing, sir! That’s the thing, sir. We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!


By heaven! I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base and despicable, the treatment of surgeons aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs—both legs—of every member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours! No! Not on any consideration! Eight and forty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a language spoken in the presence of the sun—as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in Surgeons’ Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in early life, HOW thick skulls may become!


Ah! Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr. Jarndyce, a very good profession. Diligently. Truly. And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so meritoriously acquitted himself in the—shall I say the classic shades?—in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born, not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he enters.


that I shall go at it and do my best.


Very well, Mr. Jarndyce! Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at it and to do his best,


N—no. I should like a little variety,


Very requisite, no doubt,


It is a coincidence, one of those coincidences which may or may not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I can answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!


well enough,


merely a family party,


You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham Badger’s third!


Indeed?


Her third! Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former husbands?


Not at all!


And most remarkable men! Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger’s first husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European reputation. Yes, my dear! I was observing to Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former husbands—both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people generally do, difficult to believe.


I was barely twenty, when I married Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I became the wife of Professor Dingo.


Of European reputation,


And when Mr. Badger and myself were married, we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached to the day.


So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands—two of them highly distinguished men, and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the forenoon!


But for Mr. Badger’s modesty. I would take leave to correct him and say three distinguished men.


Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!


And, my dear, what do I always tell you? That without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak—no, really, so unreasonable—as to put my reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce, in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But it’s a very fine head. A very fine head!


A very fine head!


I feel when I look at it, 'that’s a man I should like to have seen!' It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor Dingo. I knew him well—attended him in his last illness—a speaking likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy. Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me the professor’s goblet, James! Astonishing how they keep! They were presented to Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean. Not that claret! Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have. (James, Captain Swosser’s wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of this wine with you. (Captain Swosser’s claret to your mistress, James!) My love, your health!


The dear old Crippler! She was a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he fell—raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes. It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo. I felt it a good deal at first. Such an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with science—particularly science—inured me to it. Being the professor’s sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr. Badger is not in the least like either!


Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!


My darling Esther! I have a great secret to tell you!


What is it, Ada?


Oh, Esther, you would never guess!


Shall I try to guess?


Oh, no! Don’t! Pray don’t!


Now, I wonder who it can be about?


It’s about— It’s about—my cousin Richard!


Well, my own! And what about him?


Oh, Esther, you would never guess! He says—I know it’s very foolish, we are both so young—but he says, that he loves me dearly, Esther.


Does he indeed? I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago! Why, my darling, what a goose you must take me for! Your cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don’t know how long!


And yet you never said a word about it!


No, my love. I waited to be told.


But now I have told you, you don’t think it wrong of me, do you?


And now. I know the worst of it.


Oh, that’s not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!


No? Not even that?


No, not even that!


Why, you never mean to say—


Yes, I do! You know, you know I do! With all my heart I do! With all my whole heart, Esther! Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?


Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet. I should think my cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know.


We want to speak to him before Richard goes, and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind Richard’s coming in, Dame Durden?


Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?


I am not quite certain, but I think he’s waiting at the door.


Well, little woman, if you have accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.


I hope not, guardian. I can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.


Aye? And what is it, Esther?


Guardian, you remember the happy night when first we came down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room? Because—


Yes, my dear! Don’t hurry.


Because. Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have told each other so.


Already!


Yes! And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather expected it.


The deuce you did! Rick. I am glad to have won your confidence. I hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don’t be shy, Ada, don’t be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar off!


We look afar off, sir,


Well! That’s rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might tell you that you don’t know your own minds yet, that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one another what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you DO change—if you DO come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, Rick!)—don’t be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it.


I am very sure, sir, that I speak for Ada too when I say that you have the strongest power over us both—rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection—strengthening every day.


Dear cousin John, my father’s place can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him is transferred to you.


Come! Now for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely meaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here.


I will leave IT here, sir, if I brought it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.


Right! If you are not to make her happy, why should you pursue her?


I wouldn’t make her unhappy—no, not even for her love,


Well said! That’s well said! She remains here, in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. Otherwise, all will go ill. That’s the end of my preaching. I think you and Ada had better take a walk.


Am I right, Esther? Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good! I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near. Tut tut! But we must take care, too, that our little woman’s life is not all consumed in care for others.


Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the world!


I believe so, too. But some one may find out what Esther never will—that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other people!


And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther—which it may, you know! My dearest Ada, why not?


It had better declare us poor at once,


Oh! I don’t know about that, but at all events, it won’t declare anything at once. It hasn’t declared anything in heaven knows how many years.


Too true,


Yes, but the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?


You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.


But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it! We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.


No, but it may be better to forget all about it.


Well, well, then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it’s done!


Dame Durden’s approving face, was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can’t do better.


Ma’s compliments, and she hopes you’ll excuse her, because she’s correcting proofs of the plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you’ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma’s compliments.


Thank you. I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind! Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!


We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn. I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse off if I was a what’s-his-name—man and a brother! Oh, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson, though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn’t be talked over if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!


I shan’t!


Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy! I’ll never take pains to dress you any more.


Yes, I will go, Caddy!


It seems a little thing to cry about, but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that that alone makes my head ache till I can’t see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as he is! I have sent him to the other end of the room, because I don’t want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There’ll be nobody but Ma to thank for it. It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind of you. Pa told me only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn’t weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don’t care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I’d run away.


My dear! Your papa, no doubt, considers his family.


Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson, but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week’s end to week’s end, is like one great washing-day—only nothing’s washed! I am sure I pity Pa to that degree, and am so angry with Ma that I can’t find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a slave all my life, and I won’t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn’t had enough of THAT! If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house. I should have been ashamed to come here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to see you again the next time you come to town. No! Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you won’t betray me. I am engaged.


Without their knowledge at home?


Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson, how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa more miserable by telling HIM.


But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?


No. I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they should have some care taken of them then.


It began in your coming to our house. I felt I was so awkward, that I made up my mind to be improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn’t in sight, but I was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr. Turveydrop’s Academy in Newman Street.


And was it there, my dear—


Yes, it was there, and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him.


I am sorry to hear this. I must confess.


I don’t know why you should be sorry, but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of me. It’s a secret as yet, even on his side, because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed—very gentlemanly.


Does his wife know of it?


Old Mr. Turveydrop’s wife, Miss Clare? There’s no such person. He is a widower. That’s the state of the case. If I ever blame myself, I still think it’s Ma’s fault. We are to be married whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won’t much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is, that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr. Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it’s as much as he does.


It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!


Very gentlemanly indeed. He is celebrated almost everywhere for his deportment.


Does he teach?


No, he don’t teach anything in particular. But his deportment is beautiful.


I should be very glad—very glad.


Miss Summerson, Mr. Prince Turveydrop!


I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby’s friend. I began to fear, as it was past the usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.


I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,


Oh, dear!


And pray, do not allow me to be the cause of any more delay.


Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby’s friend, Miss Summerson.


Distinguished, by Miss Summerson’s presence.


My father, is a celebrated character. My father is greatly admired.


Go on, Prince! Go on! Go on, my son!


And he never does anything else. Yet would you believe that it’s HIS name on the door-plate?


His son’s name is the same, you know,


He wouldn’t let his son have any name if he could take it from him. Look at the son’s dress! Yet the father must be garnished and tricked out, because of his deportment. I’d deport him! Transport him would be better!


Does he give lessons in deportment now?


Now! Never did. I don’t believe he can fence at all, ma’am,


The airs the fellow gives himself! He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh! I could bite you!


A lady so graceful and accomplished, will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—polish—polish! To polish—polish—polish! But we are not, if I may say so to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art— —we are not what we used to be in point of deportment.


Are we not, sir?


We have degenerated. A levelling age is not favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am—still repeated occasionally among the upper classes.


Indeed?


Where what is left among us of deportment, still lingers. England—alas, my country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us but a race of weavers.


One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here,


You are very good. You flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has—no deportment.


He appears to be an excellent master,


Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But there ARE things— This kind of thing, for instance. My amiable child,


Your son is indefatigable,


It is my reward, to hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman, what a sex you are! My dear, do you know the hour?


No, father.


My son, it’s two o’clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three.


That’s time enough for me, father. I can take a morsel of dinner standing and be off.


My dear boy, you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.


Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?


Yes, my dear. I suppose, that I must show myself, as usual, about town.


You had better dine out comfortably somewhere,


My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.


That’s right. Good-bye, father!


Good-bye, my son. Bless you!


Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy.


He does it with the best intention, but it hasn’t the effect he means, poor fellow! Besides, it’s not as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself airs. I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma! There’s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone, which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It’s of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince’s wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle that it’s impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it’s the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet, but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to Ma.


Caddy, my love. I begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends.


Oh, do you? How happy that would make me!


My dear Caddy, let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right way through them.


You look pale, and cold!


I have finished my professional visit. Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I understand.


Honoured, indeed, by another visit from the wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my humble roof! Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear a double welcome!


Has she been very ill?


Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed. Not pain, you know—trouble. Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth is, we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr. Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt! The wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak House—Fitz-Jarndyce!


Miss Flite. Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since and being of some small use to her.


The kindest physician in the college. I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer estates.


She will be as well in a day or two, as she ever will be. In other words, quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?


Most extraordinary! You never heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I think, that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now that’s very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other day—I attend it regularly, with my documents—I taxed him with it, and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and HE smiled at me from his bench. But it’s great good fortune, is it not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!


And what do you call these little fellows, ma’am? Have they any names?


I can answer for Miss Flite that they have, for she promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?


Did I? Who’s that at my door? What are you listening at my door for, Krook?


I warn’t listening, Miss Flite. I was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only you’re so quick!


Make your cat go down. Drive her away!


Bah, bah! There ain’t no danger, gentlefolks, she’d never offer at the birds when I was here unless I told her to it.


You will excuse my landlord. M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?


Hi! You know I am the Chancellor.


Well? What of that?


For the Chancellor, not to be acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain’t it, Miss Flite? Mightn’t I take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce a’most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one day with another.


I never go there. I would sooner go—somewhere else.


Would you though? You’re bearing hard upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though perhaps it is but nat’ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What, you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce? It’s one of her strange ways that she’ll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named ’em all. Shall I run ’em over, Flite?


If you like,


Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That’s the whole collection, all cooped up together, by my noble and learned brother.


This is a bitter wind!


When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they’re to be let go free, and then, if that ever was to happen—which it won’t—the birds that have never been caged would kill ’em.


If ever the wind was in the east. I think it’s there to-day!


What are you doing here?


Trying to learn myself to read and write,


And how do you get on?


Slow. Bad. It’s hard at my time of life.


It would be easier to be taught by some one,


Aye, but they might teach me wrong! I don’t know what I may have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t like to lose anything by being learned wrong now.


Wrong? Who do you suppose would teach you wrong?


I don’t know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House! I don’t suppose as anybody would, but I’d rather trust my own self than another!


No, he had seen no reason to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin, of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him mad as yet.


Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!


But I don’t think it matters what my darling said. She was always merry.


Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements.


Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty—and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow.


He had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told us. I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.


Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view—in his expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money—in my expansive intentions—if you only knew it! And really he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor’s hand, he would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it—if his will were genuine and real, which it was—it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation. It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money, but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill—to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it.’


But, suppose, he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?


My dear Jarndyce, you surprise me. You take the butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?’ Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my honest friend? I like spring lamb! Well, sir. I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money! My good fellow, pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!


Did he take no legal proceedings?


Yes, he took legal proceedings. But in that he was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.


He is a great favourite with my girls, and I have promised for them.


Nature forgot to shade him off, I think. A little too boisterous—like the sea. A little too vehement—like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him! He has invited me, and if a child may trust himself in such hands—which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him—I shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?


Oh, yes!


Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff. He will never do violence to the sunshine any more. His successor informed me of it yesterday. His successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s birthday. I put it to him, ‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn’t like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?’ But he stayed. The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.


I don’t like this, Skimpole. The man was necessary. If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to know more about this.


Oh! Coavinses? Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses’ headquarters, and you can know what you will.


Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as another!


It was so new and so refreshing, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him!


Who did you want?


There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here, who is dead.


Yes? Well?


I want to know his name, if you please?


Name of Neckett,


And his address?


Bell Yard. Chandler’s shop, left hand side, name of Blinder.


Was he—I don’t know how to shape the question— industrious?


Was Neckett? Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of watching. He’d set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it.


He might have done worse. He might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That’s all I want.


Neckett’s children? Yes, Surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs.


Is it Gridley that’s wanted?


No, sir. I am going higher up.


Good day!


We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder’s got the key!”


Who has locked you up here alone?


Charley,


Is Charley your brother?


No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.


Are there any more of you besides Charley?


Me, and Emma. And Charley.


Where is Charley now?


Out a-washing,


Oh, here’s Charley!


Is it possible, that this child works for the rest? Look at this! For God’s sake, look at this! Charley, Charley! How old are you?


Over thirteen, sir,


Oh! What a great age. What a great age, Charley! And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?


Yes, sir, since father died.


And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley, how do you live?


Since father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing to-day.


God help you, Charley! You’re not tall enough to reach the tub!


In pattens I am, sir. I’ve got a high pair as belonged to mother.


And when did mother die? Poor mother!


Mother died just after Emma was born. Then father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?


And do you often go out?


As often as I can, because of earning sixpences and shillings!


And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?


To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see? Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom an’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?


No-o!


When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they, Tom?


Yes, Charley, almost quite bright.


Then he’s as good as gold. And when Emma’s tired, he puts her to bed. And when he’s tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. Don’t you, Tom?


Oh, yes, Charley! That I do!


It’s not much to forgive ’em the rent, sir, who could take it from them!


Well, well! It is enough that the time will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—This child, could she possibly continue this?


Really, sir, I think she might. She’s as handy as it’s possible to be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took ill, it really was! Mrs. Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our Father!


He had no other calling?


No, sir, he was nothing but a follerers. When he first came to lodge here, I didn’t know what he was, and I confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn’t liked in the yard. It wasn’t approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a genteel calling, and most people do object to it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger, though his temper has been hard tried.


So you gave him notice?


So I gave him notice. But really when the time came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir, and it’s something in this world even to do that.


So you kept him after all?


Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is proved.


Have many people been kind to the children?


Upon the whole, not so bad, sir, but certainly not so many as would have been if their father’s calling had been different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little subscription, and—in general—not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some people won’t employ her because she was a follerer’s child; some people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she’s patienter than others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not so bad, sir, but might be better.


I don’t know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen, but you’ll excuse my coming in. I don’t come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?


No one, surely, would come here to stare about him,


May be so, sir, may be so. I don’t want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man his life.


You have sufficient reason, I dare say, for being chafed and irritated—


There again! I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!


Not very, I think.


Sir, do you know anything of Courts of Equity?


Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.


To your sorrow? if so, I beg your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir. I have been dragged for five and twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I, am the man from Shropshire.


I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing some entertainment in the same grave place. You may have heard my name—Jarndyce.


Mr. Jarndyce, you bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of yours—that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that! You may tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it’s in my nature to do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There’s nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should become imbecile. Mr. Jarndyce, consider my case. As true as there is a heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my mother for her life. After my mother’s death, all was to come to me except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father’s son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then found out that there were not defendants enough—remember, there were only seventeen as yet!—but that we must have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The costs at that time—before the thing was begun!—were three times the legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my father’s, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else—and here I stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away? There again! The system! I am told on all hands, it’s the system. I mustn’t look to individuals. It’s the system. I mustn’t go into court and say, ‘My Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am dismissed?’ My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system. I mustn’t go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by being so cool and satisfied—as they all do, for I know they gain by it while I lose, don’t I?—I mustn’t say to him, ‘I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!’ HE is not responsible. It’s the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here—I may! I don’t know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar! I have done! Mr. Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in my part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits together. It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,’ the Lord Chancellor told me last week, ‘not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.’ ‘My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,’ said I to him, ‘and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily for me, I can’t undo the past, and the past drives me here!’ I’ll shame them. To the last, I’ll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying, ‘You have brought me here and sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet foremost!’ I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour, and let them play about. I didn’t mean to say all this, but it don’t much signify. You’re not afraid of me, Tom, are you?


No! You ain’t angry with ME.


You are right, my child. You’re going back, Charley? Aye? Come then, little one! I shouldn’t wonder if we found a ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let’s go and look for him!


For I don’t. I don’t know nothink.


Come here! Are you the boy I’ve read of in the papers?


I don’t know, nothink about no papers. I don’t know nothink about nothink at all.


Were you examined at an inquest?


I don’t know nothink about no—where I was took by the beadle, do you mean? Was the boy’s name at the inkwhich Jo?


Yes.


That’s me!


Come farther up.


You mean about the man? Him as wos dead?


Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so very ill and poor?


Oh, jist!


Did he look like—not like YOU?


Oh, not so bad as me. I’m a reg’lar one I am! You didn’t know him, did you?


How dare you ask me if I knew him?


No offence, my lady,


I am not a lady. I am a servant.


You are a jolly servant!


Listen and be silent. Don’t talk to me, and stand farther from me! Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the place where he was buried? Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to each, and don’t speak to me unless I speak to you. Don’t look back. Do what I want, and I will pay you well.


I’m fly. But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!


What does the horrible creature mean?


Stow cutting away, you know!


I don’t understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money than you ever had in your life. Who lives here?


Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull,


Go on to the next. Who lives here?


HE lived here,


In which room?


In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner. Up there! That’s where I see him stritched out. This is the public-ouse where I was took to.


Go on to the next!


He was put there,


Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!


There! Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That’s why they locks it, I s’pose. It’s always locked. Look at the rat! Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!


Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?


I don’t know nothink of consequential ground,


Is it blessed?


Which?


I’m blest if I know, but I shouldn’t think it warn’t. Blest? It an’t done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think it was t’othered myself. But I don’t know nothink!


Now, show me the spot again!


Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, my dear. His dressing-room is on my Lady’s side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon the Ghost’s Walk more distinct than it is to-night!


Why, Mr. Carstone, is very well and is, I assure you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say of me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn to the midshipmen’s mess when the purser’s junk had become as tough as the fore-topsel weather earrings. It was his naval way of mentioning generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Carstone. But I—you won’t think me premature if I mention it?


Nor Miss Clare?


Why, you see, my dears, —you’ll excuse me calling you my dears? Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so, so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that although I am still young—or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the compliment of saying so—


No. Not at all!


Very well, we will say still young.


Undoubtedly,


My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser’s command. YOU never heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts, but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo.


A man of European reputation,


When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second. I still enjoyed opportunities of observing youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo’s lectures was a large one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to throw our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there was science to an unlimited extent.


Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson. There must have been great intellectual friction going on there under the auspices of such a man!


And now, now that I am the wife of my dear third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his profession advisedly. My dear Miss Summerson, on Mr. Carstone’s character and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he would never think it worth while to mention how he really feels, but he feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr. Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a very little money and through years of considerable endurance and disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the case with Mr. Carstone.


Does Mr. Badger think so too?


Why, to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger’s mind, in addition to its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The conclusion at which I have arrived is—in short, is Mrs. Badger’s conclusion.


It was a maxim of Captain Swosser’s, speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical profession.


To all professions. It was admirably said by Captain Swosser. Beautifully said.


People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north of Devon after our marriage, that he disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The principle is the same, I think?


Precisely the same. Finely expressed! The professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness, when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. The ruling passion!


And how do you get on, Richard?


Oh! Well enough!


He can’t say better than that, Esther, can he?


Well enough?


Yes, well enough. It’s rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!


Oh! My dear Richard!


What’s the matter?


Do as well as anything else!


I don’t think there’s any harm in that, Dame Durden, because if it will do as well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.


Oh, yes, I hope so. After all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is—I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit. Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it’s all right enough. Let us talk about something else.


No, but Richard, and my dear Ada! Consider how important it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It will be too late very soon.


Oh, yes! We must talk about it! But I think Richard is right.


Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard, and they seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the profession.


Did they though? Oh! Well, that rather alters the case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don’t care much about it. But, oh, it don’t matter! It’ll do as well as anything else!


You hear him, Ada!


The fact is, it is not quite in my way. I don’t take to it. And I get too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger’s first and second.


I am sure THAT’S very natural! The very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!


Then, it’s monotonous, and to-day is too like yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day.


But I am afraid, this is an objection to all kinds of application—to life itself, except under some very uncommon circumstances.


Do you think so? Perhaps! Ha! Why, then, you know, we travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It’ll do as well as anything else. Oh, it’s all right enough! Let us talk about something else.


My dear Mother Hubbard, that’s the very thing! I have thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself for meaning to be so much in earnest and—somehow—not exactly being so. I don’t know how it is; I seem to want something or other to stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don’t settle down to constancy in other things. It’s such uphill work, and it takes such a time!


That may be, because you don’t like what you have chosen.


Poor fellow! I am sure I don’t wonder at it!


You see, my precious girl. I was a little hasty perhaps; or I misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don’t seem to lie in that direction. I couldn’t tell till I tried. Now the question is whether it’s worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems like making a great disturbance about nothing particular.


My dear Richard, how CAN you say about nothing particular?


I don’t mean absolutely that. I mean that it MAY be nothing particular because I may never want it. There, my dear Mrs. Shipton, you touch me home. Yes, I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me.


The law!


If I went into Kenge’s office, and if I were placed under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the—hum!—the forbidden ground—and should be able to study it, and master it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly conducted. I should be able to look after Ada’s interests and my own interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour. My dear Minerva. I am as steady as you are. I made a mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won’t do so any more, and I’ll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know, if it really is worth-while, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!


Rick, we can retreat with honour, and we will. But we must be careful—for our cousin’s sake, Rick, for our cousin’s sake—that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it.


Cousin John, I hope you don’t think the worse of Richard?


No, my love,


Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such a difficult case. It is not uncommon.


No, no, my love. Don’t look unhappy.


Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John! But I should be a little so if you thought at all the worse of Richard.


My dear. I should think the worse of him only if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick, for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!


No, indeed, cousin John. I am sure I could not—I am sure I would not—think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!


I think. I think it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant slumbers! Happy dreams!


Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU! As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!


Esther! At work so late, my dear?


I am working late to-night, because I couldn’t sleep and wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?


None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand,


That I could readily understand!


Remain a moment, Esther. You were in my thoughts.


I hope I was not the trouble, guardian? None that I could understand!


Little woman. I was thinking—that is, I have been thinking since I have been sitting here—that you ought to know of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing.


Dear guardian, when you spoke to me before on that subject—


But since then. I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know.


If you think so, guardian, it is right.


I think so. My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature.


One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words: ‘Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.’


Nine years, my dear, have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer’s idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun. Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life, and replied to the letter. It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one. I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the child’s aunt. That more than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration disclose. My dear, I have told you all. I saw my ward oftener than she saw me, and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy. She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!


And oftener still, she blesses the guardian who is a father to her! That I could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!


Take a fatherly good night, my dear, and so to rest. These are late hours for working and thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper!


Why, Caddy, my dear, what beautiful flowers!


Indeed, I think so, Esther. They are the loveliest I ever saw.


Prince, my dear?


No. Not Prince.


Well, to be sure, Caddy! You must have two lovers!


What? Do they look like that sort of thing?


Do they look like that sort of thing? For me?


For you. They were left behind by somebody.


Left behind?


At poor Miss Flite’s. Somebody who has been very good to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these flowers behind. No, no! Don’t take them out. Let the pretty little things lie here, because I was present myself, and I shouldn’t wonder if somebody left them on purpose!


Do they look like that sort of thing? Oh, yes, indeed they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing. Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!


As to Mr. Jarndyce, he is the finest fellow in the world, Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up of this business now.


My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four pounds—in a lump—by the transaction!


but, little woman, he hasn’t settled down there yet!


The oddity of the thing is, that my chairs and tables were not paid for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord’s peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant’s nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective! There is something grotesque in it.


Well, it’s pretty clear that whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay for them.


Exactly! That’s the crowning point of unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, ‘My good man, you are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner. Have you no consideration for HIS property?’ He hadn’t the least.


And refused all proposals,


Refused all proposals. I made him business proposals. I had him into my room. I said, ‘You are a man of business, I believe?’ He replied, ‘I am.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?’ In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression—which has something Eastern about it—that he had never seen the colour of my money. ‘My amiable friend,’ said I, ‘I never have any money. I never know anything about money.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘what do you offer if I give you time?’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘I have no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper—and wafers—I am ready to do. Don’t pay yourself at another man’s expense (which is foolish), but be business-like!’ However, he wouldn’t be, and there was an end of it.


By heaven! This a most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought to be put to death!


IS he after his time? You know my infirmity.


Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes! With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his father—and his uncle—were the most profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box. I am sorry, ladies, that I am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock’s park, and in that fellow’s property I have sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!


Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?


Sir Arrogant Numskull is here. Ha ha ha! Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels here. My Lady, is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!


I suppose. WE may set foot in the park while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?


I can lay no prohibition on my guests, except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold, which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha ha ha!—but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!


I shall not put him to the proof. He is as indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for me.


Well! I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don’t. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!


That’s the housekeeper’s grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name, and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her about her own fair person—an honour which my young friend himself does not at all appreciate. However, he can’t marry just yet, even if his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time to—fish. Ha ha ha ha!


Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?


Why, my dear Miss Clare. I think they may perhaps understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I must learn from you on such a point—not you from me.


Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!


But this is taking a good deal of trouble, when you are not in earnest after all.


Not in earnest! Not in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest. Not more!


'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight—'


He believes he is! He firmly believes it. So did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!


Do you know, it’s agreeable to me to see a man of that sort.


IS it!


Say that he wants to patronize me. Very well! I don’t object.


I do,


Do you really? But that’s taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say ‘Mighty potentate, here IS my homage! It’s easier to give it than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.’ Mighty potentate replies in effect, ‘This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my digestion and my bilious system. He doesn’t impose upon me the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton’s cloud, and it’s more agreeable to both of us.’ That’s my view of such things, speaking as a child!


But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow, where there was the opposite of that fellow—or of this fellow. How then?


How then? Just the same then! I should say, ‘My esteemed Boythorn’—to make you the personification of our imaginary friend—‘my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate? Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody’s business in the social system is to be agreeable. It’s a system of harmony, in short. Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go to dinner!’


But excellent Boythorn might say. I’ll be—


I understand. Very likely he would.


—if I WILL go to dinner! And he would probably add, ‘Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?’


To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know, ‘Upon my life I have not the least idea! I don’t know what it is you call by that name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily. But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and I lay no claim to it, and I don’t want it!’ So, you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!


Enterprise and effort, are delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures ask, ‘What is the use of a man’s going to the North Pole? What good does it do?’ I can’t say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for the purpose—though he don’t know it—of employing my thoughts as I lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say they don’t altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I shouldn’t wonder if it were!


Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?


Oh, no, Esther dear!


I have frightened you? I believe. I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce.


Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would, Lady Dedlock,


I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local disputes of Sir Leicester’s—they are not of his seeking, however, I believe—should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show you any attention here.


I am aware of the circumstances, and am sufficiently obliged.


Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his power to advance in any way?


I hope so,


I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare? You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character, if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me, to this young lady too!


Miss Summerson really is my ward. I am responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case.


Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?


Yes.


She is very fortunate in her guardian. Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr. Jarndyce.


A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you last Sunday,


What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one to me! I have achieved that reputation, I suppose.


You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock, that you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me.


So much! Yes! I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than you know me?


Yes, we happened to meet oftener,


We went our several ways, and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.


The messenger is coming back, my Lady, with the carriage.


What now? Two!


I am your maid, my Lady, at the present. The message was for the attendant.


I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady,


I did mean you, child. Put that shawl on me. I am sorry, that we are not likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly. Come in, child. I shall want you. Go on!


Is that young woman mad?


Oh, no, sir! Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece as the best. But she’s mortal high and passionate—powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others put above her, she don’t take kindly to it.


But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?


Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!


Or unless she fancies it’s blood. She’d as soon walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own’s up!


in the ministry.


My little woman, likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!


At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs. Chadband, my love?


At six,


it’s gone that.


Perhaps you’d like to begin without them,


No, my dear, no. I merely named the time.


What’s time, to eternity?


Very true, my dear. Only when a person lays in victuals for tea, a person does it with a view—perhaps—more to time. And when a time is named for having tea, it’s better to come up to it.


To come up to it! Up to it! As if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!


Not at all, my dear,


Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay, whatsername!


My friends, peace be on this house! On the master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours. Now, my friends, since I am upon this theme—


Go away!


Now, my friends, since I am upon this theme, and in my lowly path improving it—


one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.


Now, my friends, we will inquire in a spirit of love—


Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!


One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which he wish to know what the shilling ware for,


For? For his fare!


he insistes on one and eightpence or on summonsizzing the party.


My friends. I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!


You hear this apostle!


My friends, eightpence is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful! My friends, what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?


No wings.


I say, my friends, why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it, from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!


And being wanted in the—not to put too fine a point upon it—in the shop, perhaps this good company will excuse me for half a minute. Why, bless my heart, what’s the matter!


I’m always a-moving on, sar. I’ve always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do move! Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!


really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?


Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand recipe remains for you—the profound philosophical prescription—the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on! You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can’t at all agree about that. Move on!


No he don’t!


My lit-tle woman! My love, permit me! Pray have a moment’s patience, my dear. I do know something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can’t say that there’s any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.


I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row going on, and as your name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.


It was very good-natured of you, sir, and I am obliged to you.


I can’t go and live in no nicer place, sir. They wouldn’t have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such a reg’lar one as me! Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin’ral. They’re wot’s left, Mr. Snagsby, out of a sov-ring as wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this ’ere ouse and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground wot he’s berrid in. She ses to me she ses ‘are you the boy at the inkwhich?’ she ses. I ses ‘yes’ I ses. She ses to me she ses ‘can you show me all them places?’ I ses ‘yes I can’ I ses. And she ses to me ‘do it’ and I dun it and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it. And I an’t had much of the sov’ring neither, fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone’s, afore they’d square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it.


You don’t expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the sovereign, do you?


I don’t know as I do, sir. I don’t expect nothink at all, sir, much, but that’s the true hist’ry on it.


Well, Mr. Snagsby, if I don’t lock him up this time, will you engage for his moving on?


No!


My little woman! Constable, I have no doubt he’ll move on. You know you really must do it,


I’m everyways agreeable, sir,


Do it, then. You know what you have got to do. Do it! And recollect you won’t get off so easy next time. Catch hold of your money. Now, the sooner you’re five mile off, the better for all parties.


Well! Either this boy sticks to it like cobbler’s-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy’s.


You don’t say so!


For years!


Has known Kenge and Carboy’s office for years. Mrs. Chadband—this gentleman’s wife—Reverend Mr. Chadband.


Oh, indeed!


Before I married my present husband,


Was you a party in anything, ma’am?


No.


NOT a party in anything, ma’am? Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in something, ma’am?


Not exactly that, either,


Not exactly that, either! Very good. Pray, ma’am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and Carboy’s office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take time, ma’am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma’am?


Neither,


Oh! A child! Now, ma’am, perhaps you’ll have the kindness to tell us WHAT child.


You have got it at last, sir. Well, sir, it was before your time, most likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and Carboy.


Miss Summerson, ma’am!


I call her Esther Summerson. There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. ‘Esther, do this! Esther, do that!’ and she was made to do it.


My dear ma’am, the humble individual who now addresses you received that young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking you by the hand.


Hush!


My friends, we have partaken in moderation of the comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, stand forth! My young friend, you are to us a pearl, you are to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my young friend?


I don’t know. I don’t know nothink.


My young friend, it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar. O running stream of sparkling joy To be a soaring human boy! And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No. Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of love, inquire.


he is a limb of the arch-fiend.


My friends, it is right that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three hours’ improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful! My friends. I will not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?


move on


Why, you don’t mean it! Small! Here’s Jobling! Where have you sprung up from?


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. 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?


How long should I have to hold out?


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


What enemy?


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


Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime? can’t stand it.


You shall have the paper. 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. Well, and how are you?


So, so. How are you? How is SHE?


Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind—


pardon.


Any subject but that! For there ARE chords, Jobling—


pardon again.


Return immediately.


What do YOU take, Chick?


veal and ham and French beans—and don’t you forget the stuffing, Polly


Thank you, Guppy. I really don’t know but what I WILL take another.


You are a man again, Tony!


Well, not quite yet. Say, just born.


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


Thank you, Guppy. I really don’t know but what I WILL take summer cabbage.


Without slugs, Polly!


I am growing up, Guppy,


Glad to hear it.


In fact, I have just turned into my teens,


Now, Small, what would you recommend about pastry?


Marrow puddings,


You’re there, are you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take a marrow pudding. I am grown up now, Guppy. I have arrived at maturity.


What do you think, now, about—you don’t mind Smallweed?


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


Sir, to you!


I was saying, what do you think NOW, of enlisting?


Why, what I may think after dinner, 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. Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying, and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.


much more so.


If any man had told me, 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—


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. I should have let fly at his head.


Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then. You were talking about nothing else in the gig.


Guppy. I will not deny it. I was on the wrong side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round. I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square. 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,


Certainly. It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have been my weaknesses, and I don’t care who knows it. They are great weaknesses—Damme, sir, they are great. Well, what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?


Jobling, myself and our mutual friend Smallweed—


Gentlemen both!


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


Say, got the sack! Say it, Guppy. You mean it.


No-o-o! Left the Inn,


Since you left the Inn, Jobling, 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. He was not ours, and I am not acquainted with him.