Page:Bleak House.djvu/297

to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it crushes her in the usual manner. " You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion — a brimstone scorpion ! You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick witch, that ought to be burnt ! " gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. " My dear friend, will you shake me up a little ? " Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him, and shake him into his gi-ave. Eesisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make Ids head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly do^vn in his chair again, and adjusts his skull cap with such a rub, that the old man wdnks with both eyes for a minute afterwards. " O Lord ! " gasps Mr. Smallweed. " That'll do. Thank you, my dear friend, that'll do. dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord ! " And Mr. Smallweed says it, not without evident apprehensions of his dear friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever. The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair, and falls to smoking in long puffs ; consoling itself with the philosophical reflection, " The name of your friend in the city begins with a J), comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond." "Did you speak, Mr. George? " enquires the old man. The trooper shakes his head ; and leaning forward with his right elbow on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr. Smallweed a ith grave attention, and now and then fans the cloud of smoke away, in order that he may see him the more clearly. " 1 take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips, mth a round, fidl action, " that I am the only man alive (or dead either), that gets the value of a pipe out oi you ? " " Well ! " returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company, Mr. George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as you, in your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition " " Why, it's not for the value of it ; that's no gi-eat thing. It was a fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money." " Ha ! You're prudent, prudent, sir ! " cries Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs. " Veiy. I always was." Puff. " It's a sure sign of my prudence, that I ever found the way here." Puff. "Also, that I am what I am." Puff". " I am well known to be pnident," says ]Mr. George, composedly smoking. " I rose in Ufe, that way." " Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet.'* Mr. George laughs and drinks. " Ha'n't you no relations now," asks Grandfather Smallweed, with a twinkle in his eyes, " who would pay oft" this little principal, or who would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in th€ city to make you a fm'ther advance upon ? Two good names would p 2