“Yes,” replied that gentleman, “it does; but I can't help that. What Nature chooses to do is no businesss of ours.”
“Certainly,” rejoined Colin; “but I said so only because it is customary to express some kind of opinion.”
“Well, that, of course, is your own concern; but, for my part, I never make it my business either to damn or praise the weather. Nature knows her own affairs, and manages them just the same without my meddling.”
As Peter said this, he turned and led into the shop his new assistant. Groping his way along in the direction of a distant inner doorway, through which the dim remains of a fire were visible, Colin first jostled against a stand, which rattled with the concussion as though all the bottles in the United Kingdom had been jingled together; and then, in his endeavour to steer clearer on the contrary side, fell prostrate on to a prodigious heap of tailors' ends, strongly resembling in size a juvenile Primrose Hill.
“I think it's my business to get a light,” observed Veriquear. “Stop where you are till I come again.”
Colin wisely maintained his position, in accordance with the sensible advice given him, lest, by making another endeavour in the dark, he should fall foul of a stack of bones, and thus exchange for a less comfortable anchorage. In cases of this kind, he well knew that a soft bottom is the best.
When Peter returned with a candle, Colin obtained a dim vision of the objects about him. The place was so black, for want of whitewash, that its limits seemed almost indefinable every way, save overhead, and there the close proximity of his crown to the rafters reminded him that no less care would be required in humouring Mr. Veriquear's house than in pleasing its master; while the quality and amount of its contents almost led him to believe he had entered some grand national closet, in which was deposited all the unserviceable stuff, the scraps, odds and ends of the general community. The reason of this was, that Peter Veriquear dealt in almost everything he could turn a penny by, and, being somewhat large in his speculations, always had a vast mass of property in substance upon his premises. 4 As a new emigrant to the wilds of North America betakes himself to an accurate survey of his locality before he pitches his tent, and commences operations, so, wisely, did Peter Veriquear conduct Colin over the whole of his territory that night, in order that he thereby might become acquainted early with the wide field of his future labours, Through a dirty unpaved yard behind, he conducted him over various shed-like warehouses, stored with every imaginable description of rags, sorted and unsorted, with bottles of all degrees of bodily extension, from the slender pale-faced phial to the middle-sized “mixture” and the corpulent “stout;” and on the ground-floor, into a deathly region of bones, which made the moveless air smell grave-like, and stored the prompt imagination with as many spectres of slaughtered cattle and skeleton horses, as might garnish the magic circles of twenty German tales.
In a wide rambling loft, accessible through this place by a step-ladder, and open to the laths of the roof on which the tiles were hung. Colin observed a small bed and a chair or two, with a broken piece of looking-glass fixed on the wall with nails, in order, as it might appear from the deserted character of the place, that the tenant, if weary of being alone, might contemplate a representative of himself, in lack of better company.
“Is this room occupied?” asked Colin.
“When there is anybody in it,—as there ought to be every night,” replied Veriquear. “It is my business to keep these premises safe, the same as it is other people's to rob them if they could.”