“Excellent indeed!” cried Brass. “He he! Oh, very good sir. You know,” said Sampson, looking round as if in appeal to the bruised admiral, “he’s quite a remarkable man—quite!”
“Sit down,” said the dwarf. “I bought the dog yesterday. I’ve been screwing gimlets into him, and sticking forks in his eyes, and cutting my name on him. I mean to burn him at last.”
“Ha ha!” cried Brass. “Extremely entertaining, indeed!”
“Come here!” said Quilp, beckoning him to draw near. “What’s injudicious, hey?”
“Nothing sir—nothing. Scarcely worth mentioning sir; but I thought that song—admirably humorous in itself you know—was perhaps rather—”
“Yes,” said Quilp, “rather what?”
“Just bordering, or as one may say remotely verging upon the confines of injudiciousness perhaps sir,” returned Brass, looking timidly at the dwarf’s cunning eyes, which were turned towards the fire and reflected its red light.
“Why?” inquired Quilp, without looking up.
“Why, you know sir,” returned Brass, venturing to be more familiar: “—the fact is sir, that any allusion to these little combinings together of friends for objects in themselves extremely laudable, but which the law terms conspiracies, are—you take me sir?—best kept snug and among friends, you know.”
“Eh!” said Quilp, looking up with a perfectly vacant countenance. “What do you mean?”
“Cautious, exceedingly cautious, very right and proper!” cried Brass, nodding his head. “Mum sir, even here—my meaning sir, exactly.”
“Your meaning exactly, you brazen scarecrow—what’s your meaning?” retorted Quilp. “Why do you talk to me of combining together? Do I combine? Do I know anything about your combinings?”
“No no, sir—certainly not; not by any means,” returned Brass.
“If you so wink and nod at me,” said the dwarf, looking about him as if for his poker, “I’ll spoil the expression of your monkey’s face, I will.”
“Don’t put yourself out of the way I beg sir,” rejoined Brass, checking himself with great alacrity. “You’re quite right sir, quite right. I shouldn’t have mentioned the subject sir. It’s much better not to. You’re quite right sir. Let us change it, if you please. You were asking, sir, Sally told me, about our lodger. He has not returned sir.”
“No?” said Quilp, heating some rum in a little saucepan, and watching it to prevent its boiling over. “Why not?”
“Why sir,” returned Brass, “he—dear me, Mr. Quilp sir”—
“What’s the matter?” said the dwarf, stopping his hand in the act of carrying the saucepan to his mouth.
“You have forgotten the water, sir,” said Brass. “And—excuse me sir—but it’s burning hot.”
Deigning no other than a practical answer to this remonstrance, Mr. Quilp raised the hot saucepan to his lips, and deliberately drank off all the spirit it contained; which might have been in quantity about half a pint, and had been but a moment before, when he took it off the fire, bubbling and hissing fiercely. Having swallowed this gentle stimulant and shaken his fist at the admiral, he bade Mr. Brass proceed.
“But first,” said Quilp, with his accustomed grin, “have a drop yourself—a nice drop—a good, warm, fiery drop.”
“Why sir,” replied Brass, “if there was such a thing as a mouthful of water that could be got without trouble—”
“There’s no such thing to be had here,” cried the dwarf. “Water for lawyers! Melted lead and brimstone, you mean, nice hot blistering pitch and tar—that’s the thing for them—eh Brass, eh?”
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Mr. Brass. “Oh very biting! and yet it’s like being tickled—there’s a pleasure in it too, sir!”
“Drink that,” said the dwarf, who had by this time heated some more. “Toss it off, don’t leave any heeltap, scorch your throat and be happy.”
The wretched Sampson took a few short sips of the liquor, which immediately distilled itself into burning tears, and in that form came rolling down his cheeks into the pipkin again, turning the colour of his face and eyelids to a deep red, and giving rise to a violent fit of coughing, in the midst of which he was still heard to declare, with the constancy of a martyr, that it was “beautiful indeed!” While he was yet in unspeakable agonies, the dwarf renewed their conversation.
“The lodger,” said Quilp—“what about him?”
“He is still sir,” returned Brass, with intervals of coughing, “stopping with the Garland family. He has only been home once, sir, since the day of the examination of that culprit. He informed Mr. Richard sir, that he couldn’t bear the house after what had taken place; that he was wretched in it; and that he looked upon himself as being in a certain kind of way the cause of the occurrence.—A very excellent lodger sir. I hope we may not lose him.”
“Yah!” cried the dwarf. “Never thinking of anybody but yourself—why don’t you retrench then—scrape up, hoard, economise, eh?”
“Why sir,” replied Brass, “upon my word I think Sarah’s as good an economizer as any going. I do indeed, Mr. Quilp.”
“Moisten your clay, wet the other eye, drink man,” cried the dwarf. “You took a clerk to oblige me.”
“Delighted sir, I am sure, at any time,” replied Sampson. “Yes sir, I did.”
“Then, now you may discharge him,” said Quilp. “There’s a means of retrenchment for you at once.”
“Discharge Mr. Richard sir?” cried Brass.
“Have you more than one clerk, you parrot, that you ask the question? Yes.”
“Upon my word sir,” said Brass. “I wasn’t prepared for this—”
“How could you be?” sneered the dwarf, “when I wasn’t? How often am I to tell you that I brought him to you that I might always have my eye in him and know where he was—and that I had a plot, a scheme, a little quiet piece of enjoyment afoot, of which the very cream and essence was, that this old man and grandchild (who have sunk underground I think) should be, while he and his precious friend believed them rich, in reality as poor as frozen rats?”
“I quite understood that sir,” rejoined Brass. “Thoroughly.”
“Well sir,” retorted Quilp, “and do you understand now, that they’re not poor—that they can’t be, if they have such men as your lodger searching for them and scouring the country far
