Homicide, coupled with a high testimony to the morals and character of the Avenger. Mr. Swiveller, without being quite so hot upon the matter, was rather shamed by his friend's excitement, and not a little puzzled how to act (Kit being quite cool and good - humored), when the single gentleman was heard to call violently down the stairs. "Didn't I see somebody for me come in?" cried the lodger. "Yes, sir," replied Dick. "Certainly, sir." "Then where is he?" roared the single gentleman. "He's here, sir," rejoined Mr. Swiveller. "Now, young man, don't you hear you're to go up stairs? Are you deaf?" Kit did not appear to think it worth his while to enter into any altercation, but burried off and left "From Mr. Garland." "YOU'LL FIND HE'LL TURN OUT BAD." "Oh!" said Dick, with extreme politeness. "Then you may hand it over, sir. And if you're to wait for an answer, sir, you may wait in the passage, sir, which is an airy and well-ventilated apartment, sir." "Thank you," returned Kit. "But I am to give it to himself, if you please." The excessive audacity of this retort so overpowered Mr. Chuckster, and so moved his tender regard for his friend's honor, that he declared, if he were not restrained by official considerations, he must certainly have annihilated Kit upon the spot; a resentment of the affront which he did consider, under the extraordinary circumstances of aggravation attending it, could but have met with the proper sanction and approval of a jury of Englishmen, who, he had no doubt, would have returned a verdict of Justifiable the Glorious Apollos gazing at each other in silence. "Didn't I tell you so ?" said Mr. Chuckster. "What do you think of that?" Mr. Swiveller being in the main a good-natured fellow, and not perceiving in the conduct of Kit any villainy of enormous magnitude, scarcely knew what answer to return. He was relieved from his perplexity, however, by the entrance of Mr. Sampson and his sister, Sally, at sight of whom Mr. Chuckster precipitately retired. Mr. Brass and his lovely companion appeared to have been holding a consultation over their temperate breakfast, upon some matter of great interest and importance. On the occasion of such conferences, they generally appeared in the office some half an hour after their usual time, and in a very LIVELINESS OF SAMPSON BRASS. smiling state, as though their late plots and designs had tranquilized their minds and shed a light upon their toilsome way. In the present instance, they seemed particularly gay; Miss Sally's aspect being of a most oily kind, and Mr. Brass rubbing his hands in an exceedingly jocose and light-hearted manner. "Well, Mr. Richard," said Brass. How are we this morning? Are we pretty fresh and cheerful, sir-eh, Mr. Richard ?" "Pretty well, sir," replied Dick. 66 "That's well," said Brass. Ha, ha! We should be as gay as larks, Mr. Richard--why not? It's a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers. Ha, ha Any letters by the post this morning, Mr. Richard?" Mr. Swiveller answered in the negative. "Ha!" said Brass, "no matter. If there's little business to-day, there'll be more to-morrow. A contented spirit, Mr. Richard, is the sweetness of existence. Any body been here, sir?" "Only my friend--" replied Dick. "May we ne'er want a--"" or a Oh, indeed!" cried Brass. "Somebody to the lodger, eh? Ha, ha! May we ne'er want a friend, Somebody to the lodger, eh, Mr. Richard ?" "Yes," said Dick, a little disconcerted by the ex cessive buoyancy of spirits which his employer displayed. "With him now." "With him now!" cried Brass. "Ha, ha! There let 'em be, merry and free, toor rul rol le. Eh, Mr. Richard? Ha, ha!" "Oh, certainly," replied Dick. "And who," said Brass, shuffling among his papers, "who is the lodger's visitor-not a lady visitor, I hope, eh, Mr. Richard? The morals of the Marks you know, sir—' when lovely woman stoops to folly' -and all that-eb, 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 177 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 any body 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 any thing 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 stop. ped 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 toward 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 streetdoor, 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 toward 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, gentlemen 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 can not 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. But he didn't say so. "Pretty close!" "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 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." so, that some one of the inmates of Abel Cottage, Finchley, came backward and forward 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 any body 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 learned 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 realizes my idea of King Lear, as he appeared when in possession of his kingdom, Mr. Richard--the same good-humor, 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 paralyzed 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 favorite, "that I should come to be as intimate with him as I am now." "Ah!" rejoins Mr. Brass, brimful 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 A SMALL EYE AT THE KEY-HOLE. 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 hundred-weight 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 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. 179 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. As these games were very silently conducted, notwithstanding the magnitude of the interests involved, Mr. Swiveller began to think that on those evenings when Mr. and Miss Brass were out (and they often went out now) he heard a kind of snorting or hardbreathing sound in the direction of the door, which it occurred to him, after some reflection, must proceed from the small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. Looking intently that way one night, he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the key-hole; and having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole softly to the door, and pounced upon her before she was aware of his approach. "Oh! I didn't mean any harm, indeed, upon my word I didn't," cried the small servant, struggling like a much larger one. "It's so very dull down stairs. Please don't you tell upon me, please don't." "Tell upon you!" said Dick. 'Do you mean to say you were looking through the key-hole for company?" 66 66 Yes, upon my word I was," replied the small servant. "How long have you been cooling your eye there?" said Dick. "Oh, ever since you first began to play them cards, and long before." Vague recollections of several fantastic exercises with which he had refreshed himself after the fatigues of business, and to all of which, no doubt, the small servant was a party, rather disconcerted Mr. Swiveller; but he was not very sensitive on such points, and recovered himself speedily. "Well, come in "-he said, after a little consideration. "Here-sit down, and I'll teach you how to "Oh! I durstn't do it," rejoined the small servant; "Miss Sally 'ud kill me if she know'd I come up here." Have you got a fire down stairs?" said Dick. 66 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 | play." 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 gayety 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 afterward 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 "A very little one," replied the small servant. "Miss Sally couldn't kill me if she know'd I went down there, so I'll come," said Richard, putting the cards into his pocket. Why, how thin you are! What do you mean by it?" "It ain't my fault." "Could you eat any bread and meat ?" said Dick, taking down his hat. "Yes? Ah! I thought so. Did you ever taste beer?" "I had a sip of it once," said the small servant. "Here's a state of things!" cried Mr. Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “She never tasted it it can't be tasted in a sip! Why, how old are you?" "I don't know." Mr. Swiveller opened his eyes very wide, and appeared thoughtful for a moment; then bidding the child mind the door until he came back, vanished straightway. Presently he returned, followed by the boy from the public-house, who bore in one hand a plate of bread and beef, and in the other a great pot, filled with some very fragrant compound, which sent forth a grateful steam, and was indeed choice purl, made after a particular recipe which Mr. Swiveller had imparted to the landlord, at a period when he was deep in his books and desirous to conciliate his friendship. Relieving the boy of his burden at the door, aud charging his little companion to fasten it, to prevent surprise, Mr. Swiveller followed her into the kitchen. "There!" said Richard, putting the plate before her. "First of all, clear that off, and then you'll see what's next." into a saucer, and trimming the wretched candle, when the cards had been cut and dealt, "those are the stakes. If you win, you get 'em all. If I win, I get 'em. To make it seem more real and pleasant, I shall call you the Marchioness, do you hear?" The small servant nodded. "Then, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "fire away!" The Marchioness, holding her cards very tight in both hands, considered which to play, and Mr. Swiveller, assuming the gay and fashionable air which such society required, took another pull at the tankard, and waited for her lead. The small servant needed no second bidding, and the plate was soon empty. CHAPTER LVIII. R. SWIVELLER and his partner played several Next," said Dick, handing the purl, "take a pull rubbers with varying success, until the loss of at that; but moderate your transports, you know, for you're not used to it. Well, is it good?" Oh! isn't it?" said the small servant. Mr. Swiveller appeared gratified beyond all expression by this reply, and took a long draught himself; steadfastly regarding his companion while he did so. These preliminaries disposed of, he applied himself to teaching her the game, which she soon learned tolerably well, being both sharp-witted and cunning. "Now," said Mr. Swiveller, putting two sixpences three sixpences, the gradual sinking of the purl, and the striking of ten o'clock, combined to render that gentleman mindful of the flight of Time, and the expediency of withdrawing before Mr. Sampson and Miss Sally Brass returned. "With which object in view, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, gravely, "I shall ask your ladyship's permission to put the board in my pocket, and to retire from the presence when I have finished this tankard; merely observing, Marchioness, that since |