'So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment! This,' says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, 'is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person,' the other bearer, 'we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer.
Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this person.'
Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable terror and a half-subdued 'O Lord! Oh, dear me!' Nor in his apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species.
'Judy, my child,' says Grandfather Smallweed, 'give the person his twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done.'
The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a 'mission' for holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and retires.
'My dear Mr. George,' says Grandfather Smallweed, 'would you be so kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!'
His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up, chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
'O Lord!' says Mr. Smallweed, panting. 'Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My dear friend, your workman is very strong-and very prompt. O Lord, he is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little.
I'm being scorched in the legs,' which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by the smell of his worsted stockings.
The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr.
Smallweed again says, 'Oh, dear me! O Lord!' and looking about and meeting Mr. George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
'My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear friend?' adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
'No, no. No fear of that.'
'And your workman. He-Oh, dear me!-he never lets anything off without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?'
'He has never hurt anybody but himself,' says Mr. George, smiling.
'But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal, and he might hurt somebody else,' the old gentleman returns.
'He mightn't mean it-or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?'
Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to rubbing his legs.
'And you're doing well, Mr. George?' he says to the trooper, squarely standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand. 'You are prospering, please the Powers?'
Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, 'Go on. You have not come to say that, I know.'
'You are so sprightly, Mr. George,' returns the venerable grandfather. 'You are such good company.'
'Ha ha! Go on!' says Mr. George.
'My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp.
It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr.
George. Curse him!' says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. 'He owes me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head off.'
Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, 'Now for it!'
'Ho!' cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. 'Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?'
'For a pipe,' says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back.
The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the fire.
'Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U-u-u-ugh!' chatters Grandfather Smallweed, swallowing his rage. 'My dear friend!' (still clawing).
'I tell you what,' says Mr. George. 'If you want to converse with me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go about and about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't suit me. When you go winding round and round me,' says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again,
'damme, if I don't feel as if I was being smothered!'
And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure himself that he is not smothered yet.
'If you have come to give me a friendly call,' continues Mr.
George, 'I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!'
The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her grandfather one ghostly poke.
'You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman won't sit down like a Christian,' says Mr. George with his eyes musingly fixed on Judy, 'I can't comprehend.'
'She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir,' says Grandfather Smallweed. 'I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot' (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), 'but I need attention, my dear friend.'
'Well!' returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. 'Now then?'
'My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a pupil of yours.'
'Has he?' says Mr. George. 'I am sorry to hear it.'
'Yes, sir.' Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. 'He is a fine young soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable.'
'Did they?' returns Mr. George. 'Do you think your friend in the city would like a piece of advice?'
'I think he would, my dear friend. From you.'
'I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter.
There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a dead halt.'
'No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,' remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. 'Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and
