Bleak House

The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue, that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the transparent leaves, and sparkling in the beautiful interfacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs, and the air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in which we sat, and made so precious by the arched perspective through which we saw it, that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in the distance, and felt the large rain-drops rattle through the leaves.

The weather had been all the week extremely sultry; but the storm broke so suddenly – upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot – that before we reached the outskirts of the wood, the thunder and lightning were frequent, and the rain came plunging through the leaves, as if every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper's lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were water.

The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there, and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all thrown open, and we sat, just within the doorway, watching the storm. It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder, and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are, and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage, which seemed to make creation new again.

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

'O no, Esther dear!' said Ada, quietly.

Ada said it to me; but I had not spoken.

The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice, as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable pictures of myself.

Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge, before our arrival there, and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair, with her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder, when I turned my head.

'I have frightened you?' she said.

No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!

'I believe,' said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, 'I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce.'

'Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would, Lady Dedlock,' he returned.

'I recognised 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,' returned my guardian with a smile, 'and am sufficiently obliged.'

She had given him her hand, in an indifferent way that seemed habitual to her, and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful; perfectly self-possessed; and had the air, I thought, of being able to attract and interest any one, if she had thought it worth her while. The keeper had brought her a chair, on which she sat, in the middle of the porch between us.

'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?' she said, over her shoulder, to my guardian.

'I hope so,' said he.

She seemed to respect him, and even to wish to conciliate him. There was something very winning in her haughty manner; and it became more familiar – I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be – as she spoke to him over her shoulder.

'I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?'

He presented Ada, in form.

'You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,' said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, over her shoulder again, 'if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me,' and she turned full upon me, 'to this young lady too!'

'Miss Summerson really is my ward,' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'I am responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case.'

'Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?' said my Lady.

'Yes.'

'She is very fortunate in her guardian.'

Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her, and said I was indeed. All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.

'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,' he returned.

'What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one to me!' she said, with some disdain. 'I have achieved that reputation, I suppose.'

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

'So much!' she repeated, slightly laughing. 'Yes!'

With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than children. So, as she slightly laughed, and afterwards sat looking at the rain, she was as self-possessed, and as free to occupy herself with her own thoughts, as if she had been alone.

'I think you knew my sister, when we were abroad together, better than you knew me?' she said, looking at him again.

'Yes, we happened to meet oftener,' he returned.

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

Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased, the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there, silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry pace.

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

As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl; the Frenchwoman, with a defiant confidence; the pretty girl confused and hesitating.

'What now?' said Lady Dedlock. 'Two!'

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

'I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady,' said the pretty girl.

'I did mean you, child,' replied her mistress, calmly. 'Put that shawl on me.'

She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking on with her lips very tightly set.

'I am sorry,' said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, '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.'

But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful leave of Ada – none of me – and put her hand upon his proffered arm, and got into the carriage; which was a little, low, park carriage, with a hood.

'Come in, child,' she said to the pretty girl, 'I shall want you. Go on!'

The carriage rolled away; and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had alighted.

I suppose there is nothing Pride can so little bear with, as Pride itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction, through the wettest of the wet grass.

'Is that young woman mad?' said my guardian.

'O no, sir!' said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after her. '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?' said my guardian.

'Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!' said the man.

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

We passed not far from the House, a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now, with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing, the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass.

Chapter XIX
Moving on

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing Clippers, are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time being, Heaven knows where. The Courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep; Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there, walk.

The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even unto the Fields, are like tidal harbours at low water; where stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it thoughtfully.

There is only one Judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he comes along, and drinks iced ginger-beer!

The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How England can get on through four long summer months without its bar – which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity, and its only legitimate triumph in prosperity – is beside the question; assuredly that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the opposite party, that he never seems likely to recover it, is doing infinitely better than might be expected, in Switzerland. The learned gentleman who does the withering business, and who blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm, is as merry as a grig at a French watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the smallest provocation, has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery complexion in pools and fountains of law, until he has become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy Bench with legal 'chaff,' inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same great Palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely member of the bar do flit across the waste, and come upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety, they frighten one another, and retreat into opposite shades.

It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young clerks are madly in love, and, according to their various degrees, pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large. All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court, and pant about staircases and other dry places, seeking water, give short howls of aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in the streets draw their masters against pumps, or trip them over buckets. A shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot, that it is, to the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all night.

There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn their houses inside out, and sit in chairs upon the pavement – Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol's Arms has discontinued the harmonic meetings for the season, and Little Swills is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out in quite an innocent manner, and sings comic ditties of a juvenile complexion, calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of the most fastidious mind.

Over all the legal neighbourhood, there hangs, like some great veil of rust, or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influence; not only in his mind as a sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn and in the Rolls Yard, during the long vacation, than at other seasons; and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot weather to think that you live in an island, with the sea a-rolling and a-bowling right round you.

Guster is busy in the little drawing-room, on this present afternoon in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband, and no more. From Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation; but he is, as he expresses it, 'in the ministry.' Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular denomination; and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience; but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs. Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel, Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark AI, when she was something flushed by the hot weather.

'My little woman,' says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn, 'likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!'

So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth, the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue and German sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley; not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is rather a consuming vessel – the persecutors say a gorging vessel; and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork, remarkably well.

Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when they are completed, and coughing his cough of deference behind his hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, 'At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs. Chadband, my love?'

'At six,' says Mrs. Snagsby.

Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way, that 'it's gone that.'

'Perhaps you'd like to begin without them,' is Mrs. Snagsby's reproachful remark.

Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says, with his cough of mildness, 'No, my dear, no. I merely named the time.'

'What's time,' says Mrs. Snagsby, 'to eternity?'

'Very true, my dear,' says Mr. Snagsby. '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!' Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. 'Up to it! As if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!'

'Not at all, my dear,' says Mr. Snagsby.

Here Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular ghost, and, falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr. and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order) by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to announce 'Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, I mean-ter say, whatsername!' and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs. Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, and he wanted to grovel; is very much in a perspiration about the head; and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is going to edify them.

'My friends,' says Mr. Chadband, '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? O yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.'

In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr, Snagsby thinks it expedient on the whole to say Amen, which is well received.

'Now, my friends,' proceeds Mr. Chadband, 'since I am upon this theme–'

Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice, and without removing her eyes from Chadband, says, with dread distinctness, 'Go away!'

'Now, my friends,' says Chadband, 'since I am upon this theme, and in my lowly path improving it–'

Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur 'one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.' The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, 'Go away!'

'Now, my friends,' says Mr. Chadband, 'we will inquire in a spirit of love–'

Still Guster reiterates 'one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.'

Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be persecuted, and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile, says, '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,' says Guster, breathless.

'For?' returns Mrs. Chadband. 'For his fare!'

Guster replies that 'he insists on one and eightpence, or on summonsizzing the party.' Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are proceeding to grow shrill in indignation, when Mr. Chad-band quiets the tumult by lifting up his hand.

'My friends,' says he, '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!'

While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as who should say, 'You hear this Apostle!' and while Mr. Chadband glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chad-band pays the money. It is Mr. Chadband's habit – it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed – to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items, and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.

'My friends,' says Chadband, '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!'

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and, before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.

'My friends,' says he, '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?'

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, 'No wings.' But is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

'I say, my friends,' pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, '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,' says Chad-band, glancing over the table, 'from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded untoe 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!'

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience, that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.

Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at Mr. Snagsby's table, and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned, appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exemplary vessel, that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of considerable Oil Mills, or other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business, that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt – among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing military music on Mr. Chad-band's head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins – at which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.

'And being wanted in the – not to put too fine a point upon it – in the shop!' says Mr. Snagsby, rising, 'perhaps this good company will excuse me for half a minute.'

Mr. Snagsby descends, and finds the two 'prentices intently contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.

'Why, bless my heart,' says Mr. Snagsby, 'what's the matter!'

'This boy,' says the constable, 'although he's repeatedly told to, won't move on–'

'I'm always a-moving on, sir,' cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. 'I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possible move to, sir, more nor I do move!'

'He won't move on,' says the constable, calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, 'although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on.'

'O my eye! Where can I move to!' cries the boy, clutching quite desperately at his hair, and beating his bare feet upon the floor of Mr. Snagsby's passage.

'Don't you come none of that, or I shall make blessed short work of you!' says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. 'My instructions are, that you are to move on. I have told you so five hundred times.'

'But where?' cries the boy.

'Well! Really, constable, you know,' says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt; 'really that does seem a question. Where, you know?'

'My instructions don't go to that,' replies the constable. 'My instructions are that this boy is to move on.'

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!

Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect; says nothing at all, indeed; but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband, and Mrs, Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.

'The simple question is, sir,' says the constable, 'whether you know this boy. He says you do.'

Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, 'No he don't!'

'My lit-tie woman!' says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. '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.' To whom the law-stationer relates his Joful and woful experience, suppressing the half-crown fact.

'Well!' says the constable, 'so far, it seems, he had grounds for what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem inclined to keep his word, but – Oh! Here is the young man!'

Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby, and touches his hat with the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.

'I was strolling away from the office just now, when I found this row going on,' says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer; '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,' says Mr. Snagsby, 'and I am obliged to you.' And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again suppressing the half-crown fact.

'Now, I know where you live,' says the constable, then, to Jo. 'You live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live in, ain't it?'

'I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir,' replies Jo. '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!'

'You are very poor, ain't you?' says the constable.

'Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral,' replies Jo.

'I leave you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,' says the constable, producing them to the company, 'in only putting my hand upon him!'