Chapter 4 - Page 2

leading part in the execution of which had led this
gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of which the whole
expressive burden ran:

'Rumty iddity, row dow dow,
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.'

Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on
business, as 'Dear Rumty'; in answer to which, he sedately signed
himself, 'Yours truly, R. Wilfer.'

He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and
Stobbles. Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both
become absorbed in Veneering, once their traveller or commission
agent: who had signalized his accession to supreme power by
bringing into the business a quantity of plate-glass window and
French-polished mahogany partition, and a gleaming and
enormous doorplate.

R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch
of keys in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for
home. His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and
then divided from it by fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge
and that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt, was a
tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones
were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were
fought, and dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting the border of
this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made
lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head.

'Ah me!' said he, 'what might have been is not what is!'

With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience
of it not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the
end of his journey.

Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her lord
being cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the
principle which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much
given to tying up her head in a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under
the chin. This head-gear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves worn
within doors, she seemed to consider as at once a kind of armour
against misfortune (invariably assuming it when in low spirits or
difficulties), and as a species of full dress. It was therefore with
some sinking of the spirit that her husband beheld her thus
heroically attired, putting down her candle in the little hall, and
coming down the doorsteps through the little front court to open
the gate for him.

Something had gone wrong with the house-door, for R. Wilfer
stopped on the steps, staring at it, and cried:

'Hal-loa?'

'Yes,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'the man came himself with a pair of
pincers, and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had
no expectation of ever being paid for it, and as he had an order for
another LADIES' SCHOOL