No Thoroughfare | Page 8

"I'll take care. I'll take care. The singing in my head came on at where,
Mr. Bintrey?"
"At roast, and boiled, and beer," answered the lawyer,--"prompting
lodging under the same roof--and one and all--"
"Ah! And one and all singing in the head together--"
"Do you know, I really WOULD NOT let my good feelings excite me,

if I was you," hinted the lawyer again, anxiously. "Try some more
pump."
"No occasion, no occasion. All right, Mr. Bintrey. And one and all
forming a kind of family! You see, Mr. Bintrey, I was not used in my
childhood to that sort of individual existence which most individuals
have led, more or less, in their childhood. After that time I became
absorbed in my late dear mother. Having lost her, I find that I am more
fit for being one of a body than one by myself one. To be that, and at
the same time to do my duty to those dependent on me, and attach them
to me, has a patriarchal and pleasant air about it. I don't know how it
may appear to you, Mr Bintrey, but so it appears to me."
"It is not I who am all-important in the case, but you," returned Bintrey.
"Consequently, how it may appear to me is of very small importance."
"It appears to me," said Mr. Wilding, in a glow, "hopeful, useful,
delightful!"
"Do you know," hinted the lawyer again, "I really would not ex- "
"I am not going to. Then there's Handel."
"There's who?" asked Bintrey.
"Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene,
Mendelssohn. I know the choruses to those anthems by heart.
Foundling Chapel Collection. Why shouldn't we learn them together?"
"Who learn them together?" asked the lawyer, rather shortly.
"Employer and employed."
"Ay, ay," returned Bintrey, mollified; as if he had half expected the
answer to be, Lawyer and client. "That's another thing."
"Not another thing, Mr. Bintrey! The same thing. A part of the bond
among us. We will form a Choir in some quiet church near the Corner
here, and, having sung together of a Sunday with a relish, we will come

home and take an early dinner together with a relish. The object that I
have at heart now is, to get this system well in action without delay, so
that my new partner may find it founded when he enters on his
partnership."
"All good be with it!" exclaimed Bintrey, rising. "May it prosper! Is
Joey Ladle to take a share in Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell,
Doctor Arne, Greene, and Mendelssohn?
"I hope so."
"I wish them all well out of it," returned Bintrey, with much heartiness.
"Good-bye, sir."
They shook hands and parted. Then (first knocking with his knuckles
for leave) entered to Mr. Wilding from a door of communication
between his private counting-house and that in which his clerks sat, the
Head Cellarman of the cellars of Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants,
and erst Head Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson Nephew. The Joey
Ladle in question. A slow and ponderous man, of the drayman order of
human architecture, dressed in a corrugated suit and bibbed apron,
apparently a composite of door-mat and rhinoceros-hide.
"Respecting this same boarding and lodging, Young Master Wilding,"
said he.
"Yes, Joey?"
"Speaking for myself, Young Master Wilding--and I never did speak
and I never do speak for no one else--I don't want no boarding nor yet
no lodging. But if you wish to board me and to lodge me, take me. I
can peck as well as most men. Where I peck ain't so high a object with
me as What I peck. Nor even so high a object with me as How Much I
peck. Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding? The two other
cellarmen, the three porters, the two 'prentices, and the odd men?"
"Yes. I hope we shall all be an united family, Joey."

"Ah!" said Joey. "I hope they may be."
"They? Rather say we, Joey."
Joey Ladle shook his held. "Don't look to me to make we on it, Young
Master Wilding, not at my time of life and under the circumstances
which has formed my disposition. I have said to Pebbleson Nephew
many a time, when they have said to me, 'Put a livelier face upon it,
Joey'--I have said to them, 'Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that
has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the
conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it; but,' I
says, 'I have been accustomed to take MY wine in at the pores of the
skin, and, took that way, it acts different. It acts depressing. It's one
thing, gentlemen,' I says to Pebbleson Nephew, 'to charge your