A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Penguin) - Charles Dickens [277]
My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red-hot. Without further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap.
“Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.
“Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon. Well?”
“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as might do.”
“What is he prepared to swear?”
“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this time; “in a general way, anythink.”
Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. “Now, I warned you before,” said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?”
The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious what he had done.
“Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his elbow. “Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?”
“Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly, “once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is prepared to swear?”
Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having been in his company and never left him all the night in question.”
“Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?”
Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—” when my guardian blustered out:
“What? You WILL, will you?”
(“Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.)
After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:
“He is dressed like a ’spectable pieman. A sort of a pastrycook.”
“Is he here?” asked my guardian.
“I left him,” said Mike, “a settin on some door-steps round the corner.”
“Take him past that window, and let me see him.”
The window indicated, was the office window. We all three went to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of recovery, which was painted over.
“Tell him to take his witness away directly,” said my guardian to the clerk, in extreme disgust, “and ask him what he means by bringing such a fellow as that.”
My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched, standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements he had made for me. I was to go to “Barnard’s Inn” to young Mr. Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with him to his father’s house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it. Also, I was told what my allowance was to be—it was a very liberal one—and had handed to me from one of my guardian’s drawers, the cards of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes, and such other things as I could in reason want. “You will find your credit good, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt like a whole cask-full, as he hastily refreshed himself, “but I shall by this means be able to check your bills,