Chapter 32

Chapter 32 — The Appointed Time
It is night in Lincoln’s Inn — perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day — and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o’clock, has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candle-light reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheepskin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry, these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past: that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the Rag and Bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the bye-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours, and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers — Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed; and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr Krook’s being “continually in liquor,” and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol’s Arms; where the sound of the piano through the partly-opened windows jingles out into the court, and where little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece, and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to Listen, listen, listen, Tew the water-Fall! Mrs Perkins and Mrs Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings, and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window; Mrs Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted syren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol’s Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. “Sooner than which, myself,” says Mrs Perkins, “I would get my living by selling lucifers.” Mrs Piper, as in duty bound, is