‘Dear me,’ cried Fogg, ‘how do you do, Mr. Pickwick? I hope you are well, Sir. I thought I knew the face,’ said Fogg, drawing up a chair, and looking round him with a smile.
Mr. Pickwick bent his head very slightly, in answer to these salutations, and, seeing Fogg pull a bundle of papers from his coat pocket, rose and walked to the window.
‘There’s no occasion for Mr. Pickwick to move, Mr. Perker,’ said Fogg, untying the red tape which encircled the little bundle, and smiling again more sweetly than before. ‘Mr. Pickwick is pretty well acquainted with these proceedings. There are no secrets between us, I think. He! he! he!’
‘Not many, I think,’ said Dodson. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ Then both the partners laughed together—pleasantly and cheerfully, as men who are going to receive money often do.
‘We shall make Mr. Pickwick pay for peeping,’ said Fogg, with considerable native humour, as he unfolded his papers. ‘The amount of the taxed costs is one hundred and thirty-three, six, four, Mr. Perker.’
There was a great comparing of papers, and turning over of leaves, by Fogg and Perker, after this statement of profit and loss. Meanwhile, Dodson said, in an affable manner, to Mr. Pickwick—
‘I don’t think you are looking quite so stout as when I had the pleasure of seeing you last, Mr. Pickwick.’
‘Possibly not, Sir,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, who had been flashing forth looks of fierce indignation, without producing the smallest effect on either of the sharp practitioners; ‘I believe I am not, Sir. I have been persecuted and annoyed by scoundrels of late, Sir.’
Perker coughed violently, and asked Mr. Pickwick whether he wouldn’t like to look at the morning paper. To which inquiry Mr. Pickwick returned a most decided negative.
‘True,’ said Dodson, ‘I dare say you have been annoyed in the Fleet; there are some odd gentry there. Whereabouts were your apartments, Mr. Pickwick?’