“Is Mr. Lowten here, ma’am?” inquired Mr. Pickwick.
“Yes, he is, sir,” replied the landlady. “Here, Charley, show the gentleman in to Mr. Lowten.”
“The gen’lm’n can’t go in just now,” said a shambling pot-boy, with a red head, “’cos Mr. Lowten’s a singin’ a comic song, and he’ll put him out. He’ll be done d’rectly, sir.”
The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most unanimous hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses announced that the song had that instant terminated; and Mr. Pickwick, after desiring Sam to solace himself in the tap, suffered himself to be conducted into the presence of Mr. Lowten.
At the announcement of “gentleman to speak to you, sir,” a puffy-faced young man, who filled the chair at the head of the table, looked with some surprise in the direction from whence the voice proceeded: and the surprise seemed to be by no means diminished, when his eyes rested on an individual whom he had never seen before.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick, “and I am very sorry to disturb the other gentlemen, too, but I come on very particular business; and if you will suffer me to detain you at this end of the room for five minutes, I shall be very much obliged to you.”
The puffy-faced young man rose, and drawing a chair close to Mr. Pickwick in an obscure corner of the room, listened attentively to his tale of woe.
“Ah,” he said, when Mr. Pickwick had concluded, “Dodson and Fogg—sharp practice theirs—capital men of business, Dodson and Fogg, sir.”
Mr. Pickwick admitted the sharp practice of Dodson and Fogg, and Lowten resumed.