“I am afraid, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick, laying his hand gently and compassionately on his arm; “I am afraid you will have to live in some noisy crowded place. Now, pray, consider this room your own when you want quiet, or when any of your friends come to see you.”
“Friends!” interposed the man, in a voice which rattled in his throat. “If I lay dead at the bottom of the deepest mine in the world; tight screwed down and soldered in my coffin; rotting in the dark and filthy ditch that drags its slime along, beneath the foundations of this prison; I could not be more forgotten or unheeded than I am here. I am a dead man; dead to society, without the pity they bestow on those whose souls have passed to judgment. Friends to see me! My God! I have sunk, from the prime of life into old age, in this place, and there is not one to raise his hand above my bed when I lie dead upon it, and say, ‘It is a blessing he is gone!’”
The excitement, which had cast an unwonted light over the man’s face while he spoke, subsided as he concluded; and, pressing his withered hands together in a hasty and disordered manner, he shuffled from the room.
“Rides rather rusty,” said Mr. Roker, with a smile. “Ah! they’re like the elephants. They feel it now and then, and it makes ’em wild!”
Having made this deeply sympathising remark, Mr. Roker entered upon his arrangements with such expedition, that in a short time the room was furnished with a carpet, six chairs, a table, a sofa bedstead, a tea-kettle, and various small articles, on hire, at the very reasonable rate of seven-and-twenty shillings and sixpence per week.
“Now, is there anything more we can do for you?” inquired Mr. Roker, looking round with great satisfaction, and gaily chinking the first week’s hire in his closed fist.
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Pickwick, who had been musing deeply for some time. “Are there any people here, who run on errands, and so forth?”
“Outside, do you mean?” inquired Mr. Roker.
“Yes. I mean who are able to go outside. Not prisoners.”