No Thoroughfare | Page 9

glasses
in a dining-room with a Hip Hurrah and a Jolly Companions Every One,
and it's another thing to be charged yourself, through the pores, in a low
dark cellar and a mouldy atmosphere. It makes all the difference
betwixt bubbles and wapours,' I tells Pebbleson Nephew. And so it do.
I've been a cellarman my life through, with my mind fully given to the
business. What's the consequence? I'm as muddled a man as lives--you
won't find a muddleder man than me--nor yet you won't find my equal
in molloncolly. Sing of Filling the bumper fair, Every drop you
sprinkle, O'er the brow of care, Smooths away a wrinkle? Yes. P'raps
so. But try filling yourself through the pores, underground, when you
don't want to it!"
"I am sorry to hear this, Joey. I had even thought that you might join a
singing-class in the house."
"Me, sir? No, no, Young Master Wilding, you won't catch Joey Ladle
muddling the Armony. A pecking-machine, sir, is all that I am capable
of proving myself, out of my cellars; but that you're welcome to, if you
think it is worth your while to keep such a thing on your premises."
"I do, Joey."
"Say no more, sir. The Business's word is my law. And you're a going
to take Young Master George Vendale partner into the old Business?"

"I am, Joey."
"More changes, you see! But don't change the name of the Firm again.
Don't do it, Young Master Wilding. It was bad luck enough to make it
Yourself and Co. Better by far have left it Pebbleson Nephew that good
luck always stuck to. You should never change luck when it's good,
sir."
"At all events, I have no intention of changing the name of the House
again, Joey."
"Glad to hear it, and wish you good-day, Young Master Wilding. But
you had better by half," muttered Joey Ladle inaudibly, as he closed the
door and shook his head, "have let the name alone from the first. You
had better by half have followed the luck instead of crossing it."
ENTER THE HOUSEKEEPER
The wine merchant sat in his dining-room next morning, to receive the
personal applicants for the vacant post in his establishment. It was an
old-fashioned wainscoted room; the panels ornamented with festoons
of flowers carved in wood; with an oaken floor, a well-worn Turkey
carpet, and dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen service and
polish under Pebbleson Nephew. The great sideboard had assisted at
many business-dinners given by Pebbleson Nephew to their connection,
on the principle of throwing sprats overboard to catch whales; and
Pebbleson Nephew's comprehensive three-sided plate- warmer, made to
fit the whole front of the large fireplace, kept watch beneath it over a
sarcophagus-shaped cellaret that had in its time held many a dozen of
Pebbleson Nephew's wine. But the little rubicund old bachelor with a
pigtail, whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be
identified as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had
retired into another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as
cold as he. So, the golden and black griffins that supported the
candelabra, with black balls in their mouths at the end of gilded chains,
looked as if in their old age they had lost all heart for playing at ball,
and were dolefully exhibiting their chains in the Missionary line of
inquiry, whether they had not earned emancipation by this time, and

were not griffins and brothers.
Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it
discovered Cripple Corner. The light and warmth pierced in at the open
windows, and irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the
chimney-piece, the only other decoration of the walls.
"My mother at five-and-twenty," said Mr. Wilding to himself, as his
eyes enthusiastically followed the light to the portrait's face, "I hang up
here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the bloom of her
youth and beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my own
chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. O! It's you, Jarvis!"
These latter words he addressed to a clerk who had tapped at the door,
and now looked in.
"Yes, sir. I merely wished to mention that it's gone ten, sir, and that
there are several females in the Counting-house."
"Dear me!" said the wine-merchant, deepening in the pink of his
complexion and whitening in the white, "are there several? So many as
several? I had better begin before there are more. I'll see them one by
one, Jarvis, in the order of their arrival."
Hastily entrenching himself in his easy-chair at the table behind a great
inkstand, having first placed a chair on the other side of the table
opposite his own seat,