Chapter 4 - Page 2

it will conduce to the happiness, the (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there.”

“Where is ‘there,’ Mr Guppy?” said Richard as we went downstairs.

“No distance,” said Mr Guppy; “round in Thavies’ Inn, you know.”

“I can’t say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester, and am strange in London.”

“Only round the corner,” said Mr Guppy. “We just twist up Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes time, as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular now, ain’t it, miss?” He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.

“The fog is very dense indeed!” said I.

“Not that it affects you, though, I am sure,” said Mr Guppy, putting up the steps. “On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance.”

I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself for blushing at it, when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed, and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London, until we turned up under an archway, to our destination: a narrow street of high houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription JELLYBY.

“Don’t be frightened!” said Mr Guppy, looking in at the coach-window. “One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!”

“O poor child,” said I; “let me out, if you please!”

“Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to something,” said Mr Guppy.

I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him), that he was a little boy, with a naturally large head, I thought that, perhaps where his head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and beadle, that he would immediately have been pushed into the area, if I had not held his pinafore, while Richard and Mr Guppy ran down through the kitchen, to catch him when he should be released. At last he was