Chapter 20

A New Lodger

he long vacation saunters on towards term-time, like an

idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the

sea. Mr Guppy saunters along with it congenially. He has

blunted the blade of his penknife, and broken the point off, by

sticking that instrument into his desk in every direction. Not that

he bears the desk any ill will, but he must do something, and it

must be something of an exciting nature, which will lay neither his

physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy

contribution. He finds that nothing agrees with him so well, as to

make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and

gape.

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

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

Guppy’s two fellow stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr Guppy,

and Mr Richard Carstone, divide the dignity of the office. But Mr

Carstone is for the time being established in Kenge’s room,

whereat Mr Guppy chafes. So exceedingly, that he with bitter

sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when he

sups with her off a lobster and lettuce, in the Old Street Road, that

he is afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if

he had known there was a swell coming, he would have got it

painted.

Mr Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of

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

course, sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such

person wants to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when,

or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the

strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious

manner takes infinite pains to counterplot, when there is no plot;

and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary.

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

find the newcomer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce

and Jarndyce; for he well knows that nothing but confusion and

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

third saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy’s

office; to wit, Young Smallweed.

Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and

eke Chick Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling,) was

ever a boy, is much doubted in Lincoln’s Inn. He is now something

under fifteen, and an old limb of the law. He is facetiously

understood to entertain a passion for a lady at a cigar shop, in the

neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and for her sake to have broken

off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged

some years. He is a town-made article, of small statute and weazen

features; but may be perceived from a considerable distance by

means of his very tall hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his

ambition. He dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is

patronised), talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on

him. He is honoured with Mr Guppy’s particular confidence, and

occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on

difficult points in private life.

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

trying all the stools in succession and finding more of them easy,

and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a

notion of cooling it. Mr Smallweed has been twice despatched for

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

tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. Mr Guppy

propounds, for Mr Smallweed’s consideration, the paradox that

the more you drink the thirstier you are; and reclines his head

upon the window-sill in a state of hopeless languor.

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

Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr Guppy

becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the

cloistered walk below, and turning itself up in the direction of his

face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn,

and a suppressed voice cries, “Hip! Gup-py!”

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

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

Jobling.

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

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

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

Upon my soul I’m hungry.”

Jobling looks hungry, and also has the appearance of having

run to seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.

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

I want to get some dinner.”

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

out the coin, which Mr Jobling catches neatly.

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

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

returns Mr Guppy, butting inward with his head.

“What enemy?”

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

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

Mr Jobling.

Smallweed suggests the Law List. But Mr Jobling declares,

with much earnestness, that he “can’t stand it.”

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

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

staircase and read. It’s a quiet place.”

Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious

Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper, and occasionally

drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against

his becoming disgusted with waiting, and makes an untimely

departure. At last the enemy retreats, and then Smallweed fetches

Mr Jobling up.

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

him.

“So, so. How are you?”

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

ventures on the question, “How is she?” This Mr Guppy resents as

a liberty; retorting, “Jobling, there are chords in the human

mind―” Jobling begs pardon.

“Any subject but that!” says Mr Guppy, with a gloomy

enjoyment of his injury. “For there are chords, Jobling―” Mr

Jobling begs pardon again.

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

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

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

concern, he inserts in the letter-box; and then putting on the tall

hat, at the angle of inclination at which Mr Guppy wears his,

informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.

Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-

house, of the class known among its frequenters by the

denomination Slap-Bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young

female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the

susceptible Smallweed; of whom it may be remarked that he is a

weird changeling, to whom years are nothing. He stands

precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If he ever

lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat.

He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks, and smokes,

in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his collar; and he is

never to be taken in; and he knows all about it, whatever it is. In

short, in his bringing up, he has been so nursed by Law and

Equity that he has become a kind of fossil Imp, to account for

whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices that

his father was John Doe, and his mother the only female member

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

blue bag.

Into the Dining House, unaffected by the seductive show in the

window, of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant

baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for

the spit, Mr Smallweed leads the way. They know him there, and

defer to him. He has his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers,

he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than ten

minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything less

than a full-sized “bread,” or proposing to him any joint in cut,

unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is

adamant.

Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting to his dread

experience, Mr Guppy consults him in the choice of that day’s

banquet; turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress

repeats the catalogue of viands, and saying “What do you take,

Chick?” Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring

“veal and ham and French beans―And don’t you forget the

stuffing, Polly,” (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye); Mr

Guppy and Mr Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-

and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns, bearing

what is apparently a model of the tower of Babel, but what is

really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr Smallweed,

approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity

into his ancient eye, and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant

coming in, and going out, and running about, and a clatter of

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

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

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

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

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

atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to

break out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of

beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appetites.

Mr Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might

require. His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a

glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail promenade.

The same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and

particularly at the seams. He has the faded appearance of a

gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers

droop with something of a shabby air.

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

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

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

midway in theirs, that Mr Guppy proposes another. “Thank you,

Guppy,” says Mr Jobling, “I really don’t know but what I will take

another.”

Another being brought, he falls to with great good will.

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

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

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

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

contentment, Mr Guppy says:

“You are a man again, Tony!” “Well, not quite, yet,” says Mr

Jobling. “Say, just born.”

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

cabbage?”

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

what I will take summer cabbage.”

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

“Without slugs, Polly!” And cabbage produced.

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

and fork with a relishing steadiness.

“Glad to hear it.”

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

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

achieves as Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs; thus

getting over the ground in excellent style, and beating those two

gentlemen easily by a veal and ham and a cabbage.

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

about pastry?”

“Marrow puddings,” says Mr Smallweed, instantly.

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

you? Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I will take a

marrow pudding.”

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

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

by command of Mr Smallweed, “three Cheshires;” and to those,

“three small rums.” This apex of the entertainment happily

reached, Mr Jobling puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having

his own side of the box to himself), leans against the wall, and says,

“I am grown up, now, Guppy. I have arrived at maturity.”

“What do you think, now,” says Mr Guppy, “about―you don’t

mind Smallweed?”

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

good health.”

“Sir, to you!” says Mr Smallweed.

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

enlisting?”

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

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

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

What am I to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,” says

Mr Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary

fixture in an English stable. “Ill fo manger. That’s the French

saying, and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a

Frenchman. Or more so.”

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

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

when you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and

drove over to see that house at Castle Wold―”

Mr Smallweed corrects him―Chesney Wold.

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

If any man had told me, then, that I should be as hard up at the

present time as I literally find myself, I should have―well, I should

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

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

his head.”

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

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

the gig.”

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

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

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

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

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

triangular!

“I had confident expectations that things would come round

and be all square,” says Mr Jobling, with some vagueness of

expression, and perhaps of meaning, too. “But I was disappointed.

They never did. And when it came to creditors making rows at the

office, and to people that the office dealt with making complaints

about dirty trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of

that connection. And of any new professional connection, too; for

if I was to give a reference tomorrow, it would be mentioned, and

would sew me up. Then, what’s a fellow to do? I have been

keeping out of the way, and living cheap, down about the market-

gardens; but what’s the use of living cheap when you have got no

money? You might as well live dear.”

“Better,” Mr Smallweed thinks.

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

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

Jobling. “They are great weaknesses―Damme, sir, they are great.

Well!” proceeds Mr Jobling, after a defiant visit to his rum-and-

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

Mr Guppy comes more fully into the conversation, to state

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

impressive manner of a man who has not committed himself in

life, otherwise than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow

of the heart.

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

Smallweed―”

(Mr Smallweed modestly observes “Gentlemen both!” and

drinks.)

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

since you―”

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

You mean it.”

“N-o-o! Left the Inn,” Mr Smallweed delicately suggests.

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

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

thought of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?”

“I know there is such a stationer,” returns Mr Jobling. “He was

not ours, and I am not acquainted with him.”

“He is ours, Jobling, and I am acquainted with him,” Mr Guppy

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

him, through some accidental circumstances that have made me a

visitor of his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary

to offer in argument. They may―or they may not―have some

reference to a subject, which may―or may not―have cast its

shadow on my existence.”

As it is Mr Guppy’s perplexing way, with boastful misery to

tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they

touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the

chords in the human mind; both Mr Jobling and Mr Smallweed

decline the pitfall, by remaining silent.

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

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

and Mrs Snagsby are very willing to oblige me; and that Snagsby

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

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

our mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could

prove this?”

Mr Smallweed nods, and appears greedy to be sworn.

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

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

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

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

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

Snagsby.”

Mr Jobling is about to interrupt, when the sagacious Smallweed

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

Shakespeare!”

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

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

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

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

the Chancellor, across the lane?”

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

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

“Everybody knows her,” says Mr Jobling.

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

duties of late, to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting

from it the amount of her weekly rent; which I have paid (in

consequence of instructions I have received) to Krook himself,

regularly, in her presence. This has brought me into

communication with Krook, and into a knowledge of his house and

his habits. I know he has a room to let. You may live there, at a

very low charge, under any name you like; as quietly as if you were

a hundred miles off. He’ll ask no questions; and would accept you

as a tenant, at a word from me―before the clock strikes, if you

chose. And I’ll tell you another thing, Jobling,” says Mr Guppy,

who has suddenly lowered his voice, and become familiar again,

“he’s an extraordinary old chap―always rummaging among a

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

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

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

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

“You don’t mean ―?” Mr Jobling begins.

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

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

mutual friend Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me

remark, that I can’t make him out.”

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

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

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

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

secret (though I don’t believe he is ever sober), I never came

across. Now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a

soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and

whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed

pawnbroker, or a money-lender―all of which I have thought likely

at different times―it might pay you to knock up a sort of

knowledge of him. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go in for it, when

everything else suits.”

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

on the table, and their chins upon their hands, and look at the

ceiling. After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their

hands in their pockets, and look at one another.

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

with a sigh. “But there are chords in the human mind―”

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

water, Mr Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony

Jobling, and informing him that during the vacation and while

things are slack, his purse, “as far as three or four or even five

pound goes,” will be at his disposal. “For never shall it be said,”

Mr Guppy adds with emphasis, “that William Guppy turned his

back upon his friend!”

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

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

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

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

Mr Guppy replies, “Jobling, we have.”

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

manner, “Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I will take

another glass, for old acquaintance sake.”

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

incidental way.

“Did he, though!” says Mr Jobling.

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

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

have died somewhere else. It’s devilish odd that he need go and

die at my place!” Mr Jobling quite resents this liberty; several

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

enough to die in, I should think!” or, “He wouldn’t have liked my

dying at his place, I dare say!”

However, the compact being virtually made, Mr Guppy

proposes to despatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr

Krook is at home, as in that case they may complete the

negotiation without delay. Mr Jobling approving, Smallweed puts

himself under the tall hat and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in

the Guppy manner. He soon returns with the intelligence that Mr

Krook is at home, and that he has seen him through the shop-

door, sitting in his back premises, sleeping, “like one o’clock.”

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

Small, what will it be!”

Mr Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with

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

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

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

six, and six breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three,

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

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

and six is half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteen-pence out!”

Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed

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

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

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

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

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

and to have disappeared under the bed-clothes.

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

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

breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast, and quite

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

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

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

liquor, that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they

open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

times over! Open your eyes!”

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

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

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

his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible

as before.

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

Lord Chancellor? I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little

matter of business.”

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

least consciousness. After some minutes, he makes an attempt to

rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall, and

stares at them.

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

discomfiture. “How do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr

Krook. I hope you are pretty well?”

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

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

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

against it; and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The

air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the

combination of these things, recovers him. He comes back pretty

steadily, adjusting his fur-cap on his head, and looking keenly at

them.

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

wake, odd times.”

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

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

suspicious Krook.

“Only a little,” Mr Guppy explains.

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

examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

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

been making free here!”

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

me to get it filled for you?”

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

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

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

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

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

out and hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man

receives it in his arms like a beloved grandchild, and pats it

tenderly.

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

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

eighteenpenny!”

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

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

and his hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame.

“You’re a baron of the land.”

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr Guppy

presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr Weevle, and

states the object of their visit. Krook with his bottle under his arm

(he never gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or

sobriety), takes time to survey his proposed lodger, and seems to

approve of him. “You’d like to see the room, young man?” he says.

“Ah! It’s a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down

with soft soap and soda. Hi! It’s worth twice the rent; letting alone

my company when you want it, and such a cat to keep the mice

away.”

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes

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

be, and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has

dug up from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily

concluded―for the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr Guppy,

associated as he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and

Jarndyce, and other famous claims on his professional

consideration―and it is agreed that Mr Weevle shall take

possession on the morrow. Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy then repair

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

of the former to Mr Snagsby is effected, and (more important) the

vote and interest of Mrs Snagsby are secured. They then report

progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office in his tall

hat for that purpose, and separate; Mr Guppy explaining that he

would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at the

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

render it a hollow mockery.

On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr Weevle modestly

appears at Krook’s, by no means incommoded with luggage, and

establishes himself in his new lodging; where the two eyes in the

shutters stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On

the following day Mr Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing

kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite,

and a hammer of his landlord, and goes to work devising apologies

for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and

hanging up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a

penny-worth of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the

best of it.

But what Mr Weevle prizes most, of all his few possessions

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

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

collection of copper-plate impressions from that truly national

work, the Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty,

representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk

that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing. With

these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box

during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his

apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears

every variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical

instrument, fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of

prospect, and is backed up by every variety of flowerpot and

balustrade, the result is very imposing.

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

To borrow yesterday’s paper from the Sol’s Arms of an evening,

and read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are

shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction, is

unspeakable consolation to him. To know what member of what

brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and

distinguished feat of joining it yesterday, or contemplates the no

less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it tomorrow, gives

him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of

British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy

marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in

circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious

destinies of mankind. Mr Weevle reverts from this intelligence, to

the Galaxy portraits implicated; and seems to know the originals,

and to be known of them.

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

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

to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of

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

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

in a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room―where he has

inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of

ink―and talks to Krook, or is “very free,” as they call it in the

court, commendingly, with any one disposed for conversation.

Wherefore, Mrs Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer two

remarks to Mrs Perkins: Firstly, that if her Johnny was to have

whiskers, she could wish ’em to be identically like that young

man’s; and secondly, Mark my words, Mrs Perkins, ma’am, don’t

you be surprised Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at last

for old Krook’s money!

• 6小时掌握学英语的秘诀！——点击看答案
• 专治男女记不住单词的秘密