IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR.
[Illustration]
Pen in the midst of his revels and enjoyments, humble as they were, and
moderate in cost if not in kind, saw an awful sword hanging over him
which must drop down before long and put an end to his follies and
feasting. His money was very nearly spent. His club subscription had
carried away a third part of it. He had paid for the chief articles of
furniture with which he had supplied his little bed-room: in fine, he
was come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could think
of no method of providing a successor; for our friend had been bred up
like a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his mother feeds
when it cries out.
Warrington did not know what his comrade's means were. An only child,
with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who
dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his
command for any thing that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat--not
that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and
laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook's
shop with perfect content and good appetite--but he could not adopt the
penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give twopence to a waiter:
he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had a mind to do so, or if
it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he overpaid the driver. He
had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to
ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free-handed; and
for a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of pretty piteous-faced
children, he never could resist putting his hand into his pocket. It was
a sumptuous nature, perhaps, that could not be brought to regard money;
a natural generosity and kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was
pleased with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt
whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some
of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us
when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.
Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide
to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and
wickedly extravagant at college, the other was aware; every body at
college was extravagant and wild; but how great the son's expenses had
been, and how small the mother's means, were points which had not been
as yet submitted to Mr. Warrington's examination.
At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change
for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the
public-house by Mr. Warrington's pot of ale.
"It is the last rose of summer," said Pen; "its blooming companions have
gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its
leaves;" and he told Warrington the whole story, which we know, of his
mother's means, of his own follies, of Laura's generosity; during which
time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.
"Impecuniosity will do you good," Pen's friend said, knocking out
the ashes at the end of the narration; "I don't know any thing more
wholesome for a man--for an honest man, mind you--for another, the
medicine loses its effect--than a state of tick. It is an alterative
and a tonic; it keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement:
as a man who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent's single stick
before him, is forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and
braces himself to repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out
your pluck if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You
will discover what a number of things you can do without when you have
no money to buy them. You won't want new gloves and varnished boots,
eau de Cologne, and cabs to ride in. You have been bred up as a
molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women. A single man who has health
and brains, and can't find a livelihood in the world, doesn't deserve
to stay there. Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo
Bridge. Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out of
the country--he is not fit to live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us
another pull at the pale ale."
"You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?" said Pen. "There is
beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with work
or money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?"
Warrington burst out laughing, "Suppose we advertise in the Times," he
said, "for an usher's place at a classical and commercial academy--A
gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and who was
plucked for his degree--"
"Confound you," cried Pen.
"--Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments
of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils,
and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal.
Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple."
"Go on," said Pen, growling.
"Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend
Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the
continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces
them. There is Bob O'Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the
Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane's own correspondence
to that city. I know a man, sir, a doctor's son, like--well, don't be
angry, I meant nothing offensive--a doctor's son, I say, who was walking
the hospitals here, and quarreled with his governor on questions of
finance, and what did he do when he came to his last five-pound note?
he let his mustaches grow, went into a provincial town, where he
announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of
all the Russias, and by a happy operation on the editor of the country
newspaper, established himself in practice, and lived reputably for
three years. He has been reconciled to his family, and has now succeeded
to his father's gallypots."
"Hang gallypots," cried Pen. "I can't drive a coach, cut corns, or cheat
at cards. There's nothing else you propose?"
"Yes; there's our own correspondent," Warrington said. "Every man
has his secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your
money-matters, I had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune,
for, with your confounded airs and appearance, any body would suppose
you to be so. From what you tell me about your mother's income, it is
clear that you must not lay any more hands on it. You can't go on
spunging upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura is
her name?--here is your health, Laura!--and carry a hod rather than ask
for a shilling from home."
"But how earn one?" asked Pen.
"How do I live, think you?" said the other. "On my younger brother's
allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here
Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five
years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would
have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want
much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie
idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look,
I begin to feel empty," Warrington said, and showed Pen a long lean
purse, with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.
"But how do you fill it?" said Pen.
"I write," said Warrington. "I don't tell the world that I do so," he
added, with a blush. "I do not choose that questions should be asked:
or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don't wish it to be said that George
Warrington writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here,
these articles are mine." And he turned over some sheets. "I write in
a newspaper, now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor." And
Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a
file of the "Dawn," and pointed with his finger silently to one or
two articles, which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in
recognizing the style afterward--the strong thoughts and curt periods,
the sense, the satire, and the scholarship.
"I am not up to this," said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his
friend's powers. "I know very little about politics or history,
Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can't fly upon such
a wing as yours."
"But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher,
perhaps," the other said, good-naturedly. "Those little scraps and
verses which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days,
a natural gift, sir. You needn't blush, you conceited young jackanapes.
You have thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the
sacred flame--a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and
all our oil-lamps are nothing, compared to that, though ever so well
trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy," and so speaking, Warrington
stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.
Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. "How kind you
are to me, Warrington!" he said.
"I like you, old boy," said the other. "I was dev'lish lonely in
chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face somehow
pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton--that poor good little
snob. And, in fine, the reason why I can not tell--but so it is, young
'un. I'm alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to keep me
company;" and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of
Warrington's dark eyes.
Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness
of the friend who was complimenting him. "Thank you, Warrington," he
said, "thank you for your friendship to me, and--and what you say about
me. I _have_ often thought I was a poet. I will be one--I think I am
one, as you say so, though the world mayn't. Is it--is it the Ariadne
in Naxos which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the
Prize Poem?"
Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. "Why, you young goose," he
yelled out--"of all the miserable weak rubbish I ever tried, Ariadne in
Naxos is the most mawkish and disgusting. The Prize Poem is so pompous
and feeble, that I'm positively surprised, sir, it didn't get the medal.
You don't suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to
cut out Milton and AEschylus? Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you
absurd little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength and pinion which
the Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure
fields of air? No, my boy, I think you can write a magazine article, and
turn out a pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."
"By Jove!" said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, "I'll show you
that I am a better man than you think for."
Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out
of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.
* * * * *
An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very
long. That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay)
of Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review,
in which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and
gravity, used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt volume
called the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering
among its contributors not only the most eminent, but the most
fashionable poets of our time. Young Lord Dodo's poems first appeared in
this miscellany--the Honorable Percy Popjoy, whose chivalrous ballads
have obtained him such a reputation--Bedwin Sands's Eastern Ghazuls,
and many more of the works of our young nobles, were first given to the
world in the Spring Annual, which has since shared the fate of other
vernal blossoms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily
illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a
tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long
beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets
who had to write to the plates, and not the painters who illustrated
the poems.
One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced
that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr.
Bacon's reader and general manager of publications--for Mr. Bacon, not
having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely
employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then,
going into Mr. Hack's room on business of his own, found that gentleman
with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the Spring Annual before
him, and glanced at some of them.
Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures,
which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to
church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a
niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty; but the great
genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most
execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.
Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed
too, but with rather a rueful face.--"It won't do," he said, "the public
won't stand it. Bungay's people are going to bring out a very good book,
and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most titles to
be sure--but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it; she's
busy with her own poem; what's to be done? We can't lose the plate. The
governor gave sixty pounds for it?"
"I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think," said Warrington.
"Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in the
morning for the verses. You'll pay well of course."
"Of course," said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having dispatched his own
business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.
"Now, boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to
this."
"What's this? A Church Porch--a lady entering it, and a youth out of a
wine-shop window ogling her.--What the deuce am I to do with it?"
"Try," said Warrington. "Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so
to do it."
"Well, I will try," said Pen.
"And I'll go out to dinner," said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a
brown study.
[Illustration]
When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses
were done. "There they are," said Pen. "I've screwed 'em out at last.
I think they'll do."
"I think they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
follows:--
The Church Porch.
Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate,
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.
The Minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout
And noise and humming:
They've stopp'd the chiming bell,
I hear the organ's swell--
She's coming, she's coming!
My lady comes at last,
Timid and stepping fast,
And hastening hither,
With modest eyes downcast,
She comes--she's here--she's past.
May Heaven go with her!
Kneel undisturb'd, fair saint,
Pour out your praise or plaint
Meekly and duly.
I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.
But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute,
Like outcast spirits, who wait
And see through Heaven's gate
Angels within it.
"Have you got any more, young fellow?" asked Warrington. "We must make
them give you a couple of guineas a page; and if the verses are liked,
why you'll get an entree into Bacon's magazines, and may turn a decent
penny."
Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which he thought
might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these
two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple,
to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row.
Bacon's shop was an ancient low-browed building, with a few of the books
published by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of my Lord
of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private door.
Exactly opposite to Bacon's house was that of Mr. Bungay, which was
newly painted and elaborately decorated in the style of the seventeenth
century, so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over
the threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in the window.
Warrington went into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed without.
It was agreed that his embassador should act for him entirely; and the
young fellow paced up and down the street in a very nervous condition,
until he should learn the result of the negotiation. Many a poor devil
before him has trodden those flags, with similar cares and anxieties at
his heels, his bread and his fame dependent upon the sentence of his
magnanimous patrons of the Row. Pen looked at all the wonders of all
the shops; and the strange variety of literature which they exhibit.
In this were displayed black-letter volumes and books in the clear
pale types of Aldus and Elzevir: in the next, you might see the Penny
Horrific Register; the Halfpenny Annals of Crime and History of the most
celebrated Murderers of all Countries, The Raff's Magazine, The Larky
Swell, and other publications of the penny press; while at the next
window, portraits of ill-favored individuals, with facsimiles of the
venerated signatures of the Reverend Grimes Wapshot, the Reverend Elias
Howle, and the works written, and the sermons preached by them, showed
the British Dissenter where he could find mental pabulum. Hard by would
be a little casement hung with emblems, with medals and rosaries,
with little paltry prints of saints, gilt and painted, and books of
controversial theology, by which the faithful of the Roman opinion might
learn a short way to deal with Protestants, at a penny apiece, or
ninepence the dozen for distribution; while in the very next window you
might see "Come out of Rome," a sermon preached at the opening of the
Shepherd's Bush College, by John Thomas Lord Bishop of Ealing. Scarce
an opinion but has its expositor and its place of exhibition in this
peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll of the bells of Saint Paul.
Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is
going to have an interview with the dentist, examines the books on the
waiting-room table. He remembered them afterward. It seemed to him that
Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged for
some time in pleading his friend's cause.
Pen's natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but
have heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that
Mr. Bacon himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack's room while
Warrington was talking there, and Warrington knowing Bacon's weaknesses,
acted upon them with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the
first place, he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him
from the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated
with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his inferiors,
as boys pass the mark. "What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr. Bacon?"
Warrington said. "You can't live much in the world, or you would know
him. A man of property in the West, of one of the most ancient families
in England, related to half the nobility in the empire--he's cousin to
Lord Pontypool--he was one of the most distinguished men at Oxbridge;
he dines at Gaunt House every week."
"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well--really--Law bless me now,"
said Mr. Bacon.
"I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up
last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a
copy of the book--the what-d'-you-call-'em."
"Law bless me now, does he? The what-d'-you-call-'em. Indeed!"
"'The Spring Annual' is its name--as payment for these verses. You don't
suppose that such a man as Mr. Arthur Pendennis gives up a dinner at
Gaunt House for nothing? You know, as well as any body, that the men of
fashion want to be paid."
"That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir," said the publisher.
"I tell you he's a star; he'll make a name, sir. He's a new man, sir."
"They've said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington,"
the publisher interposed, with a sigh. "There was Lord Viscount Dodo,
now; I gave his lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only
sold eighty copies. Mr. Popjoy's Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead."
"Well, then, I'll take my man over to Bungay," Warrington said,
and rose from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon,
who was instantly ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr.
Warrington's, and finally asked his manager what those proposals were.
When he heard that the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of
ballads, which Mr. Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon
said, "Law bless you, give him a check directly;" and with this paper
Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen's
hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a fortune. He
offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond instantly. "What should he go
and buy for Laura and his mother? He must buy something for them."
"They'll like the book better than any thing else," said Warrington,
"with the young one's name to the verses, printed among the swells."
"Thank God! thank God!" cried Arthur, "I needn't be a charge upon the
old mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can get my own living. I can make
my own way."
"I can marry the grand vizier's daughter; I can purchase a house in
Belgrave Square; I can build a fine castle in the air!" said Warrington,
pleased with the other's exultation. "Well, you may get bread and
cheese, Pen: and I own it tastes well, the bread which you earn
yourself."
They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, at Pen's
charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a luxury, but
Warrington would not balk him; and they drank together to the health
of the Spring Annual.
It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb; so very speedily
another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was to be helped in his scheme
of making a livelihood. Warrington one day threw him a letter across
the table, which was brought by a printer's boy, "from Captain Shandon,
sir"--the little emissary said: and then went and fell asleep on his
accustomed bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit there,
and brought many a message to Pen.
"_F. P. Tuesday Morning._
"My Dear Sir,
"Bungay will be here to-day about the 'Pall-Mall Gazette.' You would
be the very man to help us _with a genuine West-end article_--you
understand--dashing, trenchant, and d---- aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw
will write; but she's not much, you know; and we've two lords, but
the less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your
own terms, and we'll make a hit with the 'Gazette.'
"Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?
"Ever yours,
"C. S."
"Some more opposition," Warrington said, when Pen had read the note.
"Bungay and Bacon are at daggers-drawn; each married the sister of the
other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners.
Hack says it was Mrs. Bungay who caused all the mischief between the
two; whereas Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon
did the business; but I don't know which is right, Peachum or Lockit.
But since they have separated, it is a furious war between the two
publishers; and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or
poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or
annual, but the rival is in the field with something similar. I have
heard poor Shandon tell with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand
dinner at Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had invited
his corps to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay engaged your
celebrated friend Mr. Wagg to edit the 'Londoner,' Bacon straightway
rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the 'Westminster
Magazine.' When Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of 'Barney
Brallaghan,' off went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking
Hibernian story of 'Looney MacTwolter.' When Doctor Hicks brought out
his 'Wanderings in Mesopotamia,' under Bacon's auspices, Bungay produced
Professor Sandiman's 'Researches in Zahara;' and Bungay is publishing
his 'Pall-Mall Gazette' as a counterpoise to Bacon's 'Whitehall Review.'
Let us go and hear about the 'Gazette.' There may be a place for you in
it, Pen, my boy. We will go and see Shandon. We are sure to find him at
home."
"Where does he live?" asked Pen.
"In the Fleet Prison," Warrington said. "And very much at home he is
there, too. He is the king of the place."
Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked with no small
interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. They went through
the ante-room, where the officers and janitors of the place were seated,
and passing in at the wicket, entered the prison. The noise and the
crowd, the life and the shouting, the shabby bustle of the place, struck
and excited Pen. People moved about ceaselessly and restless, like caged
animals in a menagerie. Men were playing at fives. Others pacing and
tramping: this one in colloquy with his lawyer in dingy black--that one
walking sadly, with his wife by his side, and a child on his arm. Some
were arrayed in tattered dressing-gowns, and had a look of rakish
fashion. Every body seemed to be busy, humming, and on the move. Pen
felt as if he choked in the place, and as if the door being locked upon
him they never would let him out.
They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through passages
full of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black doors clapping
and banging; Pen feeling as one does in a feverish morning-dream. At
last the same little runner who had brought Shandon's note, and had
followed them down Fleet-street munching apples, and who showed the way
to the two gentlemen through the prison, said, "This is the captain's
door," and Mr. Shandon's voice from within bade them enter.
The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun was shining in at the
window--near which sate a lady at work, who had been gay and beautiful
once, but in whose faded face kindness and tenderness still beamed.
Through all his errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes, this
faithful creature adored her husband, and thought him the best and
cleverest, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever
seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper; not debts: not duns:
not misery: not the bottle: not his wife's unhappy position, or his
children's ruined chances. He was perfectly fond of wife and children,
after his fashion: he always had the kindest words and smiles for them,
and ruined them with the utmost sweetness of temper. He never could
refuse himself or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase;
he would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be sure he
had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name at the back of any
man's bill, and never pay any debt of his own. He would write on any
side, and attack himself or another man with equal indifference. He
was one of the wittiest, the most amiable, and the most incorrigible
of Irishmen. Nobody could help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once,
and those whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him.
When Pen and Warrington arrived, the captain (he had been in an Irish
militia regiment once, and the title remained with him) was sitting on
his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a desk on his knees, at which he
was scribbling as fast as his rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of
paper fell off the desk wet on to the ground. A picture of his children
was hung up over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about
the room.
Opposite the captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid
countenance, with whom the little child had been trying a conversation.
"Papa's a very clever man," said she; "mamma says so."
"Oh, very," said Mr. Bungay.
"And you're a very rich man, Mr. Bundy," cried the child, who could
hardly speak plain.
"Mary!" said mamma, from her work.
"Oh, never mind," Bungay roared out with a great laugh; "no harm in
saying I'm rich--he, he--I am pretty well off, my little dear."
"If you're rich, why don't you take papa out of piz'n?" asked the child.
Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on which she was
employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains up in the room, had brought
the children's picture and placed it there, and had made one or two
attempts to ornament it.) Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red, and
looked fiercely out of his blood-shot little eyes; Shandon's pen went on,
and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock.
Captain Shandon looked up from his work. "How do you do, Mr. Warrington,"
he said. "I'll speak to you in a minute. Please sit down, gentlemen, if
you can find places," and away went the pen again.
Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau--the only available
seat--and sate down on it with a bow to Mrs. Shandon, and a nod to
Bungay: the child came and looked at Pen solemnly: and in a couple of
minutes the swift scribbling ceased; and Shandon, turning the desk over
on the bed, stooped and picked up the papers.
"I think this will do," said he. "It's the prospectus for the 'Pall-Mall
Gazette.'"
"And here's the money for it," Mr. Bungay said, laying down a five-pound
note. "I'm as good as my word, I am. When I say I'll pay, I pay."
"Faith that's more than some of us can say," said Shandon, and he
eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.