Page:Bleak House.djvu/446

“Phil” The trooper beckons as he calls him.

Phil approaches in his usual way; sidling off at first as if he were going anywhere else, and then bearing down upon his commander like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of his brush.

“Attention, Phil! Listen to this.”

“Steady, commander, steady.”

“ 'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date, drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepenee, will become due tomorrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed'—What do you make of that, Phil?”

“Mischief, guv'ner.”

“Why?”

“I think,” replies Phil, after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his forehead with the brush-handle, “that mischeevious consequences is always meant when money's asked for.

“Lookye, Phil,” says the trooper, sitting on the table. “First and last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal, in interest and one thing and another.”

Phil intimates, by sidling back a pace or two, with a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being made more promising by this incident.

“And lookye further, Phil,” says the trooper, staying his premature conclusions with a wave of his hand. “There has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call Renewed. And it has been renewed, no end of times. What do you say now?”

“I say that I think the times is come to a end at last.”

“You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.”

“Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?”

“The same.”

“Guv'ner,” says Phil, with exceeding gravity, “he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.”

Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of him, gets back, by his usual series of movements, to the target he has in hand; and vigorously signifies, through his former musical medium, that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George having folded the letter walks in that direction.

“There is a way, commander,” says Phil, looking cunningly at him, “of settling this.”

“Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.”

Phil shakes his head. “No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There is a way,” says Phil, with a highly artistic turn of his brush—” what I'm a doing at present.”

“Whitewashing?”

Phil nods.

“A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become