Chapter 32 - Page 2

of the same opinion; holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking Heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs Perkins’s) respectability. By this time, the pot-boy of the Sol’s Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs Piper accepts that tankard and retires in-doors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now, there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court, and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air — there is plenty in it — or it may be something in himself, that is in fault; but Mr Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes, between his own room and the open street door, twenty times an hour. He has been doing so, ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, Mr Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr Snagsby should be ill at ease too; for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery, of which he is a partaker, and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head — the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes long from his own door and back again, Mr Snagsby approaches.

“What, Mr Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are you there?”

“Ay!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr Snagsby.”

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer inquires.

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr Snagsby, pausing to sniff