Chapter 20 - Page 2

walks at him, founds himself entirely on him. He is honoured 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. I must enlist. I say! I wish you’d lend me half-a-crown. Upon my soul I’m hungry.”

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-a-crown, if you have got one to spare. I want to get some dinner.”

“Will you come and dine with me?” says Mr Guppy, throwing out the coin, which MrJobling 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. Going to be articled. Will you wait?”

“Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?” says Mr Jobling.

Smallweed 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 Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his