Chapter 7

Chapter 7

MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF

Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it
by way of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the
weather moist and raw. Mr Wegg finds leisure to make a little
circuit, by reason that he folds his screen early, now that he
combines another source of income with it, and also that he feels it
due to himself to be anxiously expected at the Bower. 'Boffin will
get all the eagerer for waiting a bit,' says Silas, screwing up, as he
stumps along, first his right eye, and then his left. Which is
something superfluous in him, for Nature has already screwed both
pretty tight.

'If I get on with him as I expect to get on,' Silas pursues, stumping
and meditating, 'it wouldn't become me to leave it here. It wouldn't
he respectable.' Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and
looks a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in
abeyance often will do.

Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the
church in Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and
a respect for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard
halt as to their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they
suggest the delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off
safely with the precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of
any compunction for the people who would lose the same.

Not, however, towards the 'shops' where cunning artificers work in
pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so
rich, that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for
the refiners;--not towards these does Mr Wegg stump, but towards
the poorer shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and
drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of
barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds.
From these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings,
Mr Wegg selects one dark shop-window with a tallow candle
dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely
resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among which
nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in
its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small-
sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the dark
greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door, and
follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark that
nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another
tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a
man stooping low in a chair.

Mr Wegg nods to the face, 'Good evening.'

The face looking up is a sallow face with weak