Chapter 7 - Page 2

eyes, surmounted
by a tangle of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no
cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the
more ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose
waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried
eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and stoop are
like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.

'Good evening, Mr Venus. Don't you remember?'

With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr Venus rises, and holds his
candle over the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs,
natural and artificial, of Mr Wegg.

'To be SURE!' he says, then. 'How do you do?'

'Wegg, you know,' that gentleman explains.

'Yes, yes,' says the other. 'Hospital amputation?'

'Just so,' says Mr Wegg.

'Yes, yes,' quoth Venus. 'How do you do? Sit down by the fire,
and warm your--your other one.'

'The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the
fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer,
accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and
inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the
shop. 'For that,' Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a
corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey,
gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of old pairs
of bellows.'

'My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr Wegg; will
you partake?'

It being one of Mr Wegg's guiding rules in life always to partake,
he says he will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck
so full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he
sees Mr Venus's cup and saucer only because it is close under the
candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess Mr Venus
produces another for himself until it is under his nose.
Concurrently, Wegg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the
counter, with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr
Venus's saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it
were Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad, and Mr Venus were the
sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr Wegg were the fly with
his little eye.

Mr Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted;
taking the arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to
toast it on the end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he
dives again and produces butter, with which he completes his
work.

Mr Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-bye,
presses muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of
mind, or, as one might say, to grease his works. As the muffins
disappear, little by little, the black shelves