Page:Bleak House.djvu/524

On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously fold their arms, and stop in their researches.

“Aha!” croaks the old gentleman. “How de do, gentlemen, how de do! Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That's well, that's well. Ha ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your warehouse room, if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at home here, again, I daresay? Glad to see you, glad to see you!”

Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy's eye follows Mr. Weevle's eye. Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any new intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy's eye comes back, and meets Mr. Smallweed's eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like some wound-up instrument running down, “How de do, sir—how de—how———.” And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence, as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the darkness opposite, with his hands behind him.

“Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note; but he is so good!”

Mr. Guppy slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod. Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do, and were rather amused by the novelty.

“A good deal of property here, sir, I should say,” Mr. Guppy observes to Mr. Smallweed.

“Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! rags and rubbish! Me and Bart, and my granddaughter Judy, are endeavouring to make out an inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come to much as yet, we—haven't—come—to—hah!”

Mr. Smallweed has run down again; while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended by Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.

“Well, sir,” says Mr. Weevle. “We won't intrude any longer, if you'll allow us to go up-stairs.”

“Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself so, pray!”

As they go up-stairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly, and looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that memorable night yet in the discolored grate. They have a great disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit: packing the few moveables with all possible speed, and never speaking above a whisper.

“Look here,” says Tony, recoiling. “Here's that horrible cat coming in!”

Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. “Small told me of her. She went leaping, and bounding and tearing about, that night, like a Dragon, and got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight, then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!”