Chapter 2 - Page 2

toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New
Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New
Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life was parcelled out in
almanacks and pocket-books; the coming of its moons, and stars, and
tides, was known beforehand to the moment; all the workings of its
seasons in their days and nights, were calculated with as much
precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and women.

The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New Year! The Old Year
was already looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling
cheap, like some drowned mariner's aboardship. Its patterns were
Last Year's, and going at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone.
Its treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn
successor!

Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or the Old.

'Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures!
Good old Times, Good old Times! Put 'em down, Put 'em down!'--his
trot went to that measure, and would fit itself to nothing else.

But, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time,
to the end of his journey. To the mansion of Sir Joseph Bowley,
Member of Parliament.

The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby's
order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not
Toby's.

This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak;
having breathed himself by coming incautiously out of his chair,
without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind.
When he had found his voice--which it took him a long time to do,
for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of meat--he said
in a fat whisper,

'Who's it from?'

Toby told him.

'You're to take it in, yourself,' said the Porter, pointing to a
room at the end of a long passage, opening from the hall.
'Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You're not
a bit too soon; for the carriage is at the door now, and they have
only come to town for a couple of hours, a' purpose.'

Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care,
and took the way pointed out to him; observing as he went that it
was an awfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the
family were in the country. Knocking at the room-door, he was told
to enter from within; and doing so found himself in a spacious
library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a
stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very stately gentleman in black
who wrote from her dictation; while another, and an older, and a
much statelier gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table,
walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and looked