Page:Bleak House.djvu/436

Tony, if I understand you?” says Mr. Guppy, biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.

“Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?” cries Mr. Weevle, indignantly. “Go and live there yourself.”

“O! I, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. “I have never lived there, and couldn't get a lodging there now; whereas you have got one.”

“You are welcome to it,” rejoins his friend, “and—ugh!—you may make yourself at home in it.”

“Then you really and truly at this point,” says Mr. Guppy, “give up the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?”

“You never,” returns Tony, with a most convincing stedfastness, “said a truer word in all your life. I do!”

While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their grand-daughter Judy. An air of haste and excitement pervades the party; and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window, and bawls to Mr. Guppy, “How de do, sir! How de do!”

“What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I wonder!” says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.

“My dear sir,” cries Grandfather Smallweed,” would you do me a favor? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, sir? ”

Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, “the public-house in the court?” And they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the Sol's Arms.

“There's your fare!” says the Patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin, and shaking his incapable fist at him. “Ask me for a penny more, and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck won't squeeze you tighter than I can help. O Lord! O dear me! O my bones!”

It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers croaking sounds, expressive of obstructed respiration, he fulfils his share of the porterage, and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the parlor of the Sol's Arms.

“O Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an arm-chair. “O dear me! O my bones and back! O my aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll parrot! Sit down!”

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady, whenever she finds herself on her feet, to amble about, and “set” to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations, as any imbecile