"What!" cried Tom.
"Having taken a chair."
"You said a pudding."
"No, no," replied John, colouring rather; "a chair. The idea of a stranger coming into my rooms at half-past eight o"clock in the morning, and taking a pudding! Having taken a chair, Tom, a chair--amazed me by opening the conversation thus: "I believe you are acquainted, sir, with Mr Thomas Pinch?"
"No!" cried Tom.
"His very words, I a.s.sure you. I told him I was. Did I know where you were at present residing? Yes. In London? Yes. He had casually heard, in a roundabout way, that you had left your situation with Mr Pecksniff.
Was that the fact? Yes, it was. Did you want another? Yes, you did."
"Certainly," said Tom, nodding his head.
"Just what I impressed upon him. You may rest a.s.sured that I set that point beyond the possibility of any mistake, and gave him distinctly to understand that he might make up his mind about it. Very well."
"Then," said he, "I think I can accommodate him.""
Tom"s sister stopped short.
"Lord bless me!" cried Tom. "Ruth, my dear, "think I can accommodate him.""
"Of course I begged him," pursued John Westlock, glancing at Tom"s sister, who was not less eager in her interest than Tom himself, "to proceed, and said that I would undertake to see you immediately. He replied that he had very little to say, being a man of few words, but such as it was, it was to the purpose--and so, indeed, it turned out--for he immediately went on to tell me that a friend of his was in want of a kind of secretary and librarian; and that although the salary was small, being only a hundred pounds a year, with neither board nor lodging, still the duties were not heavy, and there the post was.
Vacant, and ready for your acceptance."
"Good gracious me!" cried Tom; "a hundred pounds a year! My dear John!
Ruth, my love! A hundred pounds a year!"
"But the strangest part of the story," resumed John Westlock, laying his hand on Tom"s wrist, to bespeak his attention, and repress his ecstasies for the moment; "the strangest part of the story, Miss Pinch, is this. I don"t know this man from Adam; neither does this man know Tom."
"He can"t," said Tom, in great perplexity, "if he"s a Londoner. I don"t know any one in London."
"And on my observing," John resumed, still keeping his hand upon Tom"s wrist, "that I had no doubt he would excuse the freedom I took in inquiring who directed him to me; how he came to know of the change which had taken place in my friend"s position; and how he came to be acquainted with my friend"s peculiar fitness for such an office as he had described; he drily said that he was not at liberty to enter into any explanations."
"Not at liberty to enter into any explanations!" repeated Tom, drawing a long breath.
""I must be perfectly aware," he said," John added, ""that to any person who had ever been in Mr Pecksniff"s neighbourhood, Mr Thomas Pinch and his acquirements were as well known as the Church steeple, or the Blue Dragon.""
"The Blue Dragon!" repeated Tom, staring alternately at his friend and his sister.
"Aye, think of that! He spoke as familiarly of the Blue Dragon, I give you my word, as if he had been Mark Tapley. I opened my eyes, I can tell you, when he did so; but I could not fancy I had ever seen the man before, although he said with a smile, "You know the Blue Dragon, Mr Westlock; you kept it up there, once or twice, yourself." Kept it up there! So I did. You remember, Tom?"
Tom nodded with great significance, and, falling into a state of deeper perplexity than before, observed that this was the most unaccountable and extraordinary circ.u.mstance he had ever heard of in his life.
"Unaccountable?" his friend repeated. "I became afraid of the man.
Though it was broad day, and bright sunshine, I was positively afraid of him. I declare I half suspected him to be a supernatural visitor, and not a mortal, until he took out a common-place description of pocket-book, and handed me this card."
"Mr Fips," said Tom, reading it aloud. "Austin Friars. Austin Friars sounds ghostly, John."
"Fips don"t, I think," was John"s reply. "But there he lives, Tom, and there he expects us to call this morning. And now you know as much of this strange incident as I do, upon my honour."
Tom"s face, between his exultation in the hundred pounds a year, and his wonder at this narration, was only to be equalled by the face of his sister, on which there sat the very best expression of blooming surprise that any painter could have wished to see. What the beef-steak pudding would have come to, if it had not been by this time finished, astrology itself could hardly determine.
"Tom," said Ruth, after a little hesitation, "perhaps Mr Westlock, in his friendship for you, knows more of this than he chooses to tell."
"No, indeed!" cried John, eagerly. "It is not so, I a.s.sure you. I wish it were. I cannot take credit to myself, Miss Pinch, for any such thing.
All that I know, or, so far as I can judge, am likely to know, I have told you."
"Couldn"t you know more, if you thought proper?" said Ruth, sc.r.a.ping the pie-board industriously.
"No," retorted John. "Indeed, no. It is very ungenerous in you to be so suspicious of me when I repose implicit faith in you. I have unbounded confidence in the pudding, Miss Pinch."
She laughed at this, but they soon got back into a serious vein, and discussed the subject with profound gravity. Whatever else was obscure in the business, it appeared to be quite plain that Tom was offered a salary of one hundred pounds a year; and this being the main point, the surrounding obscurity rather set it off than otherwise.
Tom, being in a great flutter, wished to start for Austin Friars instantly, but they waited nearly an hour, by John"s advice, before they departed. Tom made himself as spruce as he could before leaving home, and when John Westlock, through the half-opened parlour door, had glimpses of that brave little sister brushing the collar of his coat in the pa.s.sage, taking up loose st.i.tches in his gloves and hovering lightly about and about him, touching him up here and there in the height of her quaint, little, old-fashioned tidiness, he called to mind the fancy-portraits of her on the wall of the Pecksniffian workroom, and decided with uncommon indignation that they were gross libels, and not half pretty enough; though, as hath been mentioned in its place, the artists always made those sketches beautiful, and he had drawn at least a score of them with his own hands.
"Tom," he said, as they were walking along, "I begin to think you must be somebody"s son."
"I suppose I am," Tom answered in his quiet way.
"But I mean somebody"s of consequence."
"Bless your heart," replied Tom, "my poor father was of no consequence, nor my mother either."
"You remember them perfectly, then?"
"Remember them? oh dear yes. My poor mother was the last. She died when Ruth was a mere baby, and then we both became a charge upon the savings of that good old grandmother I used to tell you of. You remember! Oh!
There"s nothing romantic in our history, John."
"Very well," said John in quiet despair. "Then there is no way of accounting for my visitor of this morning. So we"ll not try, Tom."
They did try, notwithstanding, and never left off trying until they got to Austin Friars, where, in a very dark pa.s.sage on the first floor, oddly situated at the back of a house, across some leads, they found a little blear-eyed gla.s.s door up in one corner, with Mr FIPS painted on it in characters which were meant to be transparent. There was also a wicked old sideboard hiding in the gloom hard by, meditating designs upon the ribs of visitors; and an old mat, worn into lattice work, which, being useless as a mat (even if anybody could have seen it, which was impossible), had for many years directed its industry into another channel, and regularly tripped up every one of Mr Fips"s clients.
Mr Fips, hearing a violent concussion between a human hat and his office door, was apprised, by the usual means of communication, that somebody had come to call upon him, and giving that somebody admission, observed that it was "rather dark."
"Dark indeed," John whispered in Tom Pinch"s ear. "Not a bad place to dispose of a countryman in, I should think, Tom."
Tom had been already turning over in his mind the possibility of their having been tempted into that region to furnish forth a pie; but the sight of Mr Fips, who was small and spare, and looked peaceable, and wore black shorts and powder, dispelled his doubts.
"Walk in," said Mr Fips.
They walked in. And a mighty yellow-jaundiced little office Mr Fips had of it; with a great, black, sprawling splash upon the floor in one corner, as if some old clerk had cut his throat there, years ago, and had let out ink instead of blood.
"I have brought my friend Mr Pinch, sir," said John Westlock.
"Be pleased to sit," said Mr Fips.
They occupied the two chairs, and Mr Fips took the office stool from the stuffing whereof he drew forth a piece of horse-hair of immense length, which he put into his mouth with a great appearance of appet.i.te.