He was occupied in this diversion when a coach stopped near the door, and presently afterwards there was a loud double-knock. As this was no business of Mr Swiveller’s, the person not ringing the office bell, he pursued his diversion with perfect composure, notwithstanding that he rather thought there was nobody else in the house.
In this, however, he was mistaken; for, after the knock had been repeated with increased impatience, the door was opened, and somebody with a very heavy tread went up the stairs and into the room above. Mr Swiveller was wondering whether this might be another Miss Brass, twin sister to the Dragon, when there came a rapping of knuckles at the office door.
‘Come in!’ said Dick. ‘Don’t stand upon ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I’ve many more customers. Come in!’
‘Oh, please,’ said a little voice very low down in the doorway, ‘will you come and show the lodgings?’
Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.
‘Why, who are you?’ said Dick.
To which the only reply was, ‘Oh, please will you come and show the lodgings?’
There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.
‘I hav’n’t got anything to do with the lodgings,’ said Dick. ‘Tell ‘em to call again.’
‘Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings,’ returned the girl; ‘It’s eighteen shillings a week and us finding plate and linen. Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day.’