Not, however, towards the “shops” where cunning artificers work in pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich, that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the refiners;—not towards these does Mr. Wegg stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr. Wegg selects one dark shopwindow with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door, and follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark that nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a man stooping low in a chair.
Mr. Wegg nods to the face, “Good evening.”
The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a tangle of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.
“Good evening, Mr. Venus. Don’t you remember?”
With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr. Venus rises, and holds his candle over the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs, natural and artificial, of Mr. Wegg.
“To be sure!” he says, then. “How do you do?”
“Wegg, you know,” that gentleman explains.
“Yes, yes,” says the other. “Hospital amputation?”
“Just so,” says Mr. Wegg.
“Yes, yes,” quoth Venus. “How do you do? Sit down by the fire, and warm your—your other one.”
The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr. Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. “For that,” Mr. Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, “is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,” with another sniff, “as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows.”
“My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr. Wegg; will you partake?”
It being one of Mr. Wegg’s guiding rules in life always to partake, he says he will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees Mr. Venus’s cup and saucer only because it is close under the candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess Mr. Venus produces another for himself until it is under his nose. Concurrently, Wegg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the counter, with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr. Venus’s saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it were Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad, and Mr. Venus were the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr. Wegg were the fly with his little eye.
Mr. Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted; taking the arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to toast it on the end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he dives again and produces butter, with which he completes his work.
Mr. Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-by, presses muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of mind, or, as one might say, to grease his works. As the muffins disappear, little by little, the black shelves and nooks and corners begin to appear, and Mr. Wegg gradually acquires an imperfect notion that over against him on the chimneypiece is a Hindu baby in a bottle, curved up with his big head tucked under him, as he would instantly throw a summersault if the bottle were large enough.
When he deems Mr. Venus’s wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr. Wegg approaches his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands together, to express an undesigning frame of mind:
“And how have I been going on, this long time, Mr. Venus?”
“Very bad,” says Mr. Venus, uncompromisingly.
“What? Am I still at home?” asks Wegg, with an air of surprise.
“Always at home.”
This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his feelings, and observes, “Strange. To what do you attribute it?”
“I don’t know,” replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a weak voice of querulous complaint, “to what to attribute it, Mr. Wegg. I can’t work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will, you can’t be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, and say—‘No go! Don’t match!’ ”
“Well, but hang it, Mr. Venus,” Wegg expostulates with some little irritation, “that can’t be personal and peculiar in me. It must often happen with miscellaneous ones.”
“With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare a miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can’t keep to nature, and be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no other man’s will go with them; but elseways I can be miscellaneous. I have just sent home
