Page:Bleak House.djvu/665

Was you ever modelled now?” Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head.

Mercury never was modelled.

“Then you ought to be, you know,” says Mr. Bucket; “and a friend of mine that you’ll hear of one day as a Royal Academy Sculptor, would stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for the marble. My Lady’s out, ain’t she?”

“Out to dinner.”

“Goes out pretty well every day, don’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Not to be wondered at!” says Mr. Bucket. “Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the same way of life as yourself?”

Answer in the negative.

“Mine was,” says Mr. Bucket. “My father was first a page, then a footman, then a butler, then a steward, then a innkeeper. Lived universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath that he considered service the most honorable part of his career, and so it was. I’ve a brother in service, and a brother-in-law. My Lady a good temper?”

Mercury replies, “As good as you can expect.”

“Ah!“ says Mr. Bucket, “a little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! What can you anticipate when they’re so handsome as that? And we like ’em all the better for it, don’t we?”

Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a man of gallantry, and can’t deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a violent ringing at the bell. “Talk of the angels,” says Mr. Bucket. “Here she is!”

The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning, and wears two beautiful bracelets. Either their beauty, or the beauty of her arms, is particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager eye, and rattles something in his pocket—halfpence perhaps.

Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the other Mercury who has brought her home.

“Mr. Bucket, my Lady.”

Mr. Bucket makes a leg, and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over the region of his mouth.

“Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?”

“No, my Lady, I’ve seen him!”

“Have you anything to say to me?”

“Not just at present, my Lady.”

“Have you made any new discoveries?”

“A few, my Lady.”

This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave; past murderous groups of statuary, repeated with their shadowy weapons