Chapter IV.
After lunch, Mr. Noman Luckier resumed his work. The simple-minded friend followed him into his study, seated himself in the most comfortable chair, lit a cigar, and produced from his pocket a handy-volume edition of Pickwick. Oddly enough he commenced reading the concluding portion of Chapter XXXVIII. of that immortal work, which records how an elderly gentleman of scientific attainments suddenly observed certain extraordinary and wonderful phenomena, which he immediately concluded "it had been reserved for him alone to discover, and which he should immortalise his name by chronicling for the benefit of posterity. Full of this idea, the scientific gentleman seized the pen" and began writing "sundry notes of these unparalleled appearances ... which were to form the data of a voluminous treatise of great research and deep learning, which should astonish all the atmospherical wiseacres that ever drew breath in any part of the civilised globe." Subsequently, after a sharp shock which "stunned him for a full quarter of an hour," produced by Sam Weller's fist, the scientific gentleman retired to his library, and there composed a masterly treatise which "delighted all the Scientific Associations beyond measure, and caused him to be considered a light of science ever afterwards."
The simple-minded friend, having finished his cigar, replaced Pickwick in his pocket, and, smiling gently, stole out of the study on tiptoe, leaving Mr. Noman Luckier profoundly absorbed in his "Preliminary Notes."
The boy, whose name was not Cosmos, is still at large,—and so is Cosmos, very much so.