As a means towards his composure and self-possession, he entered into a more minute examination of the office than he had yet had time to make; looked into the wig-box, the books, and ink-bottle; untied and inspected all the papers; carved a few devices on the table with the sharp blade of Mr. Brass’s penknife; and wrote his name on the inside of the wooden coal-scuttle. Having, as it were, taken formal possession of his clerkship in virtue of these proceedings, he opened the window and leaned negligently out of it until a beer-boy happened to pass, whom he commanded to set down his tray and to serve him with a pint of mild porter, which he drank upon the spot and promptly paid for, with the view of breaking ground for a system of future credit and opening a correspondence tending thereto, without loss of time. Then three or four little boys dropped in on legal errands from three or four attorneys of the Brass grade, whom Mr. Swiveller received and dismissed with about as professional a manner, and as correct and comprehensive an understanding of their business, as would have been shown by a clown in a pantomime under similar circumstances. These things done and over, he got upon his stool again and tried his hand at drawing caricatures of Miss Brass with a pen and ink, whistling very cheerfully all the time.
He was occupied in this diversion when a coach stopped near the door, and presently afterwards there was a loud double-knock. As this was no business of Mr. Swiveller’s, the person not ringing the office bell, he pursued his diversion with perfect composure, notwithstanding that he rather thought there was nobody else in the house.
In this, however, he was mistaken; for after the knock had been repeated with increased impatience, the door was opened, and somebody with a very heavy tread went up the stairs and into the room above. Mr. Swiveller was wondering whether this might be another Miss Brass, twin sister to the Dragon, when there came a rapping of knuckles at the office door.
“Come in!” said Dick. “Don’t stand upon ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I’ve many more customers. Come in!”
“Oh, please,” said a little voice very low down in the doorway, “will you come and show the lodgings?”
Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.
“Why, who are you?” said Dick.
To which the only reply was, “Oh, please will you come and show the lodgings?”
There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of Dick as Dick was amazed at her.
“I haven’t got anything to do with the lodgings,” said Dick. “Tell ’em to call again.”
“Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings,” returned the girl; “it’s eighteen shillings a week and us finding plate and linen. Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in wintertime is eightpence a day.”
“Why don’t you show ’em yourself? You seem to know all about ’em,” said Dick.
“Miss Sally said I wasn’t to, because people wouldn’t believe the attendance was good if they saw how small I was first.”
“Well, but they’ll see how small you are afterwards, won’t they?” said Dick.
“Ah! But then they’ll have taken ’em for a fortnight certain,” replied the child with a shrewd look; “and people don’t like moving when they’re once settled.”
“This is a queer sort of thing,” muttered Dick, rising. “What do you mean to say you are—the cook?”
“Yes, I do plain cooking;” replied the child. “I’m housemaid too; I do all the work of the house.”
“I suppose Brass and the Dragon and I do the dirtiest part of it,” thought Dick. And he might have thought much more, being in a doubtful and hesitating mood, but that the girl again urged her request, and certain mysterious bumping sounds on the passage and staircase seemed to give note of the applicant’s impatience. Richard Swiveller, therefore, sticking a pen behind each ear, and carrying another in his mouth as a token of his great importance and devotion to business, hurried out to meet and treat with the single gentleman.
He was a little surprised to perceive that the bumping sounds were occasioned by the progress upstairs of the single gentleman’s trunk, which, being nearly twice as wide as the staircase, and exceedingly heavy withal, it was no easy matter for the united exertions of the single gentleman and the coachman to convey up the steep ascent. But there they were, crushing each other, and pushing and pulling with all their might, and getting the trunk tight and fast in all kinds of impossible angles, and to pass them was out of the question; for which sufficient reason, Mr. Swiveller followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against the house of Mr. Sampson Brass being thus taken by storm.
To these remonstrances, the single gentleman answered not a word, but when the trunk was at last got into the bedroom, sat down upon it and wiped his bald head and face with his handkerchief. He was very warm, and well he might be; for, not to mention the exertion of getting the trunk upstairs, he was closely muffled up in winter garments, though the thermometer had stood all day at eighty-one in the shade.
“I believe, sir,” said Richard Swiveller, taking his pen out of his mouth, “that you desire to look at these apartments. They are very charming apartments, sir. They command an uninterrupted view of—of over the way, and they are within one minute’s walk of—of the corner of the street. There is
