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Marks you know, sir--"when lovely women stoops to folly"--and all

that--eh, Mr Richard?'

'Another young man, who belongs to Witherden's too, or half belongs

there,' returned Richard. 'Kit, they call him.'

'Kit, eh!' said Brass. 'Strange name--name of a dancing-master's

fiddle, eh, Mr Richard? Ha ha! Kit's there, is he? Oh!'

Dick looked at Miss Sally, wondering that she didn't check this

uncommon exuberance on the part of Mr Sampson; but as she made no

attempt to do so, and rather appeared to exhibit a tacit acquiescence

in it, he concluded that they had just been cheating somebody, and

receiving the bill.

'Will you have the goodness, Mr Richard,' said Brass, taking a letter

from his desk, 'just to step over to Peckham Rye with that? There's no

answer, but it's rather particular and should go by hand. Charge the

office with your coach-hire back, you know; don't spare the office; get

as much out of it as you can--clerk's motto--Eh, Mr Richard? Ha ha!'

Mr Swiveller solemnly doffed the aquatic jacket, put on his coat, took

down his hat from its peg, pocketed the letter, and departed. As soon

as he was gone, up rose Miss Sally Brass, and smiling sweetly at her

brother (who nodded and smote his nose in return) withdrew also.

Sampson Brass was no sooner left alone, than he set the office-door

wide open, and establishing himself at his desk directly opposite, so

that he could not fail to see anybody who came down-stairs and passed

out at the street door, began to write with extreme cheerfulness and

assiduity; humming as he did so, in a voice that was anything but

musical, certain vocal snatches which appeared to have reference to the

union between Church and State, inasmuch as they were compounded of the

Evening Hymn and God save the King.

Thus, the attorney of Bevis Marks sat, and wrote, and hummed, for a

long time, except when he stopped to listen with a very cunning face,

and hearing nothing, went on humming louder, and writing slower than

ever. At length, in one of these pauses, he heard his lodger's door

opened and shut, and footsteps coming down the stairs. Then, Mr Brass

left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his

very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man

whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite

seraphic.

It was towards this moving spectacle that the staircase and the sweet

sounds guided Kit; on whose arrival before his door, Mr Brass stopped

his singing, but not his smiling, and nodded affably: at the same time

beckoning to him with his pen.

'Kit,' said Mr Brass, in the pleasantest way imaginable, 'how do you

do?'

Kit, being rather shy of his friend, made a suitable reply, and had his

hand upon the lock of the street door when Mr Brass called him softly

back.

'You are not to go, if you please, Kit,' said the attorney in a

mysterious and yet business-like way. 'You are to step in here, if you

please. Dear me, dear me! When I look at you,' said the lawyer,

quitting his stool, and standing before the fire with his back towards

it, 'I am reminded of the sweetest little face that ever my eyes

beheld. I remember your coming there, twice or thrice, when we were in

possession. Ah Kit, my dear fellow, gentleman in my profession have

such painful duties to perform sometimes, that you needn't envy us--you

needn't indeed!'

'I don't, sir,' said Kit, 'though it isn't for the like of me to judge.'

'Our only consolation, Kit,' pursued the lawyer, looking at him in a

sort of pensive abstraction, 'is, that although we cannot turn away the

wind, we can soften it; we can temper it, if I may say so, to the shorn

lambs.'

'Shorn indeed!' thought Kit. 'Pretty close!' But he didn't say _so_.

'On that occasion, Kit,' said Mr Brass, 'on that occasion that I have

just alluded to, I had a hard battle with Mr Quilp (for Mr Quilp is a

very hard man) to obtain them the indulgence they had. It might have

cost me a client. But suffering virtue inspired me, and I prevailed.'

'He's not so bad after all,' thought honest Kit, as the attorney pursed

up his lips and looked like a man who was struggling with his better

feelings.

'I respect you, Kit,' said Brass with emotion. 'I saw enough of your

conduct, at that time, to respect you, though your station is humble,

and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waistcoat that I look at. It is

the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage.

But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually

moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at all

mankind!'

This poetic figure, which Kit took to be in a special allusion to his

own checked waistcoat, quite overcame him; Mr Brass's voice and manner

added not a little to its effect, for he discoursed with all the mild

austerity of a hermit, and wanted but a cord round the waist of his

rusty surtout, and a skull on the chimney-piece, to be completely set

up in that line of business.

'Well, well,' said Sampson, smiling as good men smile when they

compassionate their own weakness or that of their fellow-creatures,

'this is wide of the bull's-eye. You're to take that, if you please.'

As he spoke, he pointed to a couple of half-crowns on the desk.

Kit looked at the coins, and then at Sampson, and hesitated.

'For yourself,' said Brass. 'From--'

'No matter about the person they came from,' replied the lawyer. 'Say

me, if you like. We have eccentric friends overhead, Kit, and we

mustn't ask questions or talk too much--you understand? You're to take

them, that's all; and between you and me, I don't think they'll be the

last you'll have to take from the same place. I hope not. Good bye,

Kit. Good bye!'

With many thanks, and many more self-reproaches for having on such

slight grounds suspected one who in their very first conversation

turned out such a different man from what he had supposed, Kit took the

money and made the best of his way home. Mr Brass remained airing

himself at the fire, and resumed his vocal exercise, and his seraphic

smile, simultaneously.

'May I come in?' said Miss Sally, peeping.

'Oh yes, you may come in,' returned her brother.

'Ahem!' coughed Miss Brass interrogatively.

'Why, yes,' returned Sampson, 'I should say as good as done.'

CHAPTER 57

Mr Chuckster's indignant apprehensions were not without foundation.

Certainly the friendship between the single gentleman and Mr Garland

was not suffered to cool, but had a rapid growth and flourished

exceedingly. They were soon in habits of constant intercourse and

communication; and the single gentleman labouring at this time under a

slight attack of illness--the consequence most probably of his late

excited feelings and subsequent disappointment--furnished a reason for

their holding yet more frequent correspondence; so that some one of the

inmates of Abel Cottage, Finchley, came backwards and forwards between

that place and Bevis Marks, almost every day.

As the pony had now thrown off all disguise, and without any mincing of

the matter or beating about the bush, sturdily refused to be driven by

anybody but Kit, it generally happened that whether old Mr Garland

came, or Mr Abel, Kit was of the party. Of all messages and inquiries,

Kit was, in right of his position, the bearer; thus it came about that,

while the single gentleman remained indisposed, Kit turned into Bevis

Marks every morning with nearly as much regularity as the General

Postman.

Mr Sampson Brass, who no doubt had his reasons for looking sharply

about him, soon learnt to distinguish the pony's trot and the clatter

of the little chaise at the corner of the street. Whenever the sound

reached his ears, he would immediately lay down his pen and fall to

rubbing his hands and exhibiting the greatest glee.

'Ha ha!' he would cry. 'Here's the pony again! Most remarkable pony,

extremely docile, eh, Mr Richard, eh sir?'

Dick would return some matter-of-course reply, and Mr Brass standing on

the bottom rail of his stool, so as to get a view of the street over

the top of the window-blind, would take an observation of the visitors.

'The old gentleman again!' he would exclaim, 'a very prepossessing old

gentleman, Mr Richard--charming countenance, sir--extremely

calm--benevolence in every feature, sir. He quite realises my idea of

King Lear, as he appeared when in possession of his kingdom, Mr

Richard--the same good humour, the same white hair and partial

baldness, the same liability to be imposed upon. Ah! A sweet subject

for contemplation, sir, very sweet!'

Then Mr Garland having alighted and gone up-stairs, Sampson would nod

and smile to Kit from the window, and presently walk out into the

street to greet him, when some such conversation as the following would

ensue.

'Admirably groomed, Kit'--Mr Brass is patting the pony--'does you great

credit--amazingly sleek and bright to be sure. He literally looks as

if he had been varnished all over.'

Kit touches his hat, smiles, pats the pony himself, and expresses his

conviction, 'that Mr Brass will not find many like him.'

'A beautiful animal indeed!' cries Brass. 'Sagacious too?'

'Bless you!' replies Kit, 'he knows what you say to him as well as a

Christian does.'

'Does he indeed!' cries Brass, who has heard the same thing in the same

place from the same person in the same words a dozen times, but is

paralysed with astonishment notwithstanding. 'Dear me!'

'I little thought the first time I saw him, Sir,' says Kit, pleased

with the attorney's strong interest in his favourite, 'that I should

come to be as intimate with him as I am now.'

'Ah!' rejoins Mr Brass, brim-full of moral precepts and love of virtue.

'A charming subject of reflection for you, very charming. A subject of

proper pride and congratulation, Christopher. Honesty is the best

policy.--I always find it so myself. I lost forty-seven pound ten by

being honest this morning. But it's all gain, it's gain!'

Mr Brass slyly tickles his nose with his pen, and looks at Kit with the

water standing in his eyes. Kit thinks that if ever there was a good

man who belied his appearance, that man is Sampson Brass.

'A man,' says Sampson, 'who loses forty-seven pound ten in one morning

by his honesty, is a man to be envied. If it had been eighty pound,

the luxuriousness of feeling would have been increased. Every pound

lost, would have been a hundredweight of happiness gained. The still

small voice, Christopher,' cries Brass, smiling, and tapping himself on

the bosom, 'is a-singing comic songs within me, and all is happiness

and joy!'

Kit is so improved by the conversation, and finds it go so completely

home to his feelings, that he is considering what he shall say, when Mr

Garland appears. The old gentleman is helped into the chaise with

great obsequiousness by Mr Sampson Brass; and the pony, after shaking

his head several times, and standing for three or four minutes with all

his four legs planted firmly on the ground, as if he had made up his

mind never to stir from that spot, but there to live and die, suddenly

darts off, without the smallest notice, at the rate of twelve English

miles an hour. Then, Mr Brass and his sister (who has joined him at

the door) exchange an odd kind of smile--not at all a pleasant one in

its expression--and return to the society of Mr Richard Swiveller,

who, during their absence, has been regaling himself with various feats

of pantomime, and is discovered at his desk, in a very flushed and

heated condition, violently scratching out nothing with half a penknife.

Whenever Kit came alone, and without the chaise, it always happened

that Sampson Brass was reminded of some mission, calling Mr Swiveller,

if not to Peckham Rye again, at all events to some pretty distant place

from which he could not be expected to return for two or three hours,

or in all probability a much longer period, as that gentleman was not,

to say the truth, renowned for using great expedition on such

occasions, but rather for protracting and spinning out the time to the

very utmost limit of possibility. Mr Swiveller out of sight, Miss

Sally immediately withdrew. Mr Brass would then set the office-door

wide open, hum his old tune with great gaiety of heart, and smile

seraphically as before. Kit coming down-stairs would be called in;

entertained with some moral and agreeable conversation; perhaps

entreated to mind the office for an instant while Mr Brass stepped over

the way; and afterwards presented with one or two half-crowns as the

case might be. This occurred so often, that Kit, nothing doubting but

that they came from the single gentleman who had already rewarded his

mother with great liberality, could not enough admire his generosity;

and bought so many cheap presents for her, and for little Jacob, and

for the baby, and for Barbara to boot, that one or other of them was

having some new trifle every day of their lives.

While these acts and deeds were in progress in and out of the office of

Sampson Brass, Richard Swiveller, being often left alone therein, began

to find the time hang heavy on his hands. For the better preservation

of his cheerfulness therefore, and to prevent his faculties from

rusting, he provided himself with a cribbage-board and pack of cards,

and accustomed himself to play at cribbage with a dummy, for twenty,

thirty, or sometimes even fifty thousand pounds aside, besides many

hazardous bets to a considerable amount.