the echoes of Cook's Court perform | slow music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his ironbound hat in his hand for a little ventilation. Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence, and who has been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, takes that interest in the case, that he enters on a regular crossexamination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step up-stairs, and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into the drawingroom doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape, like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing, and of its being lengthy; for, Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs. Snagsby feels, not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition, but that it lifts her hushand's establishment higher up in the law. During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground, and waits to be floated off. "Well!" says Mr. Guppy, "either this boy sticks to it like cobbler's wax, or there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's." Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say 80 !" "For years!" replies Mrs. Chadband. "Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband this gentleman's wifeReverend Mr. Chadband." "Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy. "Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband. "Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring his cross-examination. "No." "Not a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband shakes her head. "Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to model his conversation on forensic prin ciples. 'Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke with a hard-favored smile. "Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. "Very good. Pray, ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?" "Neither," says Mrs. Chadband, as before. "Oh! A child !" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us what child." "You have got at it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband, with another hardfavored smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and Carboy." "Miss Summerson, ma'am !" cries Mr. Guppy, excited. "I call her Esther Summerson,” says Mrs. Chadband, with austerity. "There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. 'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it." "My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small apart. ment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received that young lady in London, when she first came here from the establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking you by the hand." Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, inakes his accustomed signal, and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!" "My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken, in moderation" (which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned), "of the comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual profit? young friend, stand forth " My Jo, thus apostrophised, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch forward, and another slonch to each side, and confronts the eloquent Chadband, with evident doubts of his intentions. "My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a O running stream of sparkling joy And do you cool yourself in that streami At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his face, and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend. My friends," says Mr. Chadband, with his persecuted chin folding itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three hours' improving. The account is now favorably balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!" Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby. "My friends," says Chadband, looking round him, in conclusion, "I will not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to deliver a discourse untoe you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon inany pleasant days, to hear discourses?" (This, with a cow-like lightness.) Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms, gives & shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs. Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But, before he goes down stairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms. So. Mr. Chadband-of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin-retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge, where he finds a baking stony corner, wherein to settle to his repast. And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great Cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a red and violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion of the great, confused city; so golden, so high up, so far out of his reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams-everything moving on to some purpose and to one end-until he is stirred up, and told to "move on " too. CHAPTER XX. A NEW LODGER. swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted. Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool in Kenge and Carboy's office, of entertain THE long vacation saunters on towards term-time, like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his penknife, and broken the point off, by sticking that instru-ing, as a matter of course, sinister dement into his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will, but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees with him so well, as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape. Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken out a shooting licence, and gone down to his father's, and Mr. Guppy's two fellow stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Richard Carstone, divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes. So exceedingly, that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when he mps with her off a lobster and lettuce, in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good enough for signs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot, when there is no plot; and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary. It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find the new comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office; to wit, Young Smallweed. Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling,) was ever a boy, is much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now M Jobling looks hungry, and also has the appearance of having run to seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford. "I say! Just throw out half-acrown, if you have got one to spare. I want to get some dinner." something under fifteen, and an old | I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd limb of the law. He is facetiously lend me half-a-crown. Upon my soul understood to entertain a passion for a I'm hungry." lady at a cigar shop, in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a townmade article, of small stature and weazen features; but may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on him. He is honored with Mr. Guppy's particular confidence, and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on difficult points in private life. Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning, after trying all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds, for Mr. Smallweed's consideration, the paradox that the more you drink the thirstier you are; and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a state of hopeless languor. While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below, and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn, and a suppressed voice cries, "Hip! Gup-py!" "Why, you don't mean it?" says Mr. Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's Jobling!" Small's head looks out of window too, and nods to Jobling. "Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr. Guppy. "From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any longer. "Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly. "How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling. "Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes," returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head. "What enemy?" "A new one. Will you wait?” Going to be articled. "Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr. Jobling. Swallweed suggests the Law List. But Mr. Jobling declares, with much earnestness, that he "can't stand it." "You shall have the paper,' says Mr. Guppy. "He shall bring it down. But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and read. It's a quiet place." Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Small weed supplies him with the newspaper, and occasionally drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted with waiting, and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up. "Well, and how are you?" says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him. "So, so. How are you?” Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling ventures on the question, "How is she?" This Mr. Guppy resents as a liberty; retorting, Jobling, there are chords in the human mind-" Jobling bega pardon. Any subject but that!" says Mr. Guppy, with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury. "For there are chords, Jobling-.' |