‘“O.”?’ said the boy sharply. ‘Overseer.’
‘Why are they late on Monday?’
‘I suppose,’ said the boy, ‘they stop too late at church on Sanday. They are a pretty old ikey lot as works ‘ere, and so I tell you.’
Paul began to revise his opinion as to the probable character of his associates. But perhaps the boy was purposely misleading him. He thought it worth while to wait and see.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, by way of keeping the conversation going.
‘Tom Ketling,’ said the boy, ‘but they calls me “Tat” for short, because I used to hang about outside Tattersall’s and run errands. I picked up most of my education there. There ain’t many of ‘em as can teach me anything.’ He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy shuffling footstep on the stairs. ‘Oh, my!’ he cried, ‘this is a marble, and no error! How are you, Forty?’
‘You here?’ said the man thus hailed. ‘Why, how you are reforming!’ His voice had a deep chuckling husk in it, as if he had just finished an exhausting laugh, and his lungs still panted. His face and figure were vague in the fog and dimness of the place, but as he rolled and chuckled nearer Paul stared at him, not without reason. He was respectably attired at the first glance in a heavy overcoat of milled cloth, with facings of some sort of cheap imitation fur, and a silk-hat which, though creased in many places, was flatteringly oiled, and shone with a lustre to which its age bequeathed no right. He had a high collar which rose to the cheek-bone, and was severely starched, though yellow and serrated at the edges. His face was a flame of high colour, and his nose was a burlesque on the nose of Bardolph. It was not merely huge; it was portentous. It was of the size and shape of a well-grown winter pear, and it wagged as he walked, touching now one bloated cheek and now the other. It was garnished with many dark bosses, as if it were ornamented by round nails of a purple tone, and when once the owner had carried it fairly under the gas-jet it seemed as if it were the nose which shed such light as there was to struggle with the fog. ‘You see it,’ he cried, with the same short-winded chuckle. ‘Everybody sees it Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!’ He shook his head rapidly from side to side, and the amazing nose tapped either cheek in turn with an actual audible sound like the faintest clapping of hands. Apart from this deformity and the sanguine colour of his face he was a jolly-looking fellow, and his brown eyes twinkled as if they had been transparent, with a flickering light behind them. ‘I got that,’ he said, rubbing die nose with the palm of one hand, ‘from my highly respectable grandfather. He was a great landowner, so I’m told, down Guildford way, and drank more port and brandy-punch than any man in England. This’—he fondled the nose again—‘this skipped a generation. My highly respectable father’s proboscis was pure Greek—Greek so pure, sir, that the late President of the Royal Academy has been known to follow him about London in a hansom-cab from dawn to dewy eve in the hope of catching its outline. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!’ He wagged the monstrous feature again. He stopped short with a ludicrous solemnity. ‘Your highly respectable name is Armstrong?’ he said with a voice and attitude of courtesy. ‘I judged so. You are a turnover apprentice from the establishment of your highly respectable father in the country? Exactly. My highly respectable name is Warr, sir. I am sometimes known as Forty in recognition of a little feat of mine, in respect of which “let other lips,” et cetera. I suppose that I have never told you——’ He was in an attitude of extremest confidence, but he changed it with a flourish, ‘I was told, sir, to be here to meet you. It is mine to initiate you into the highly respectable mysteries. I suppose I never told you ‘—the air of confidence was back again—‘that I am the owner of an heirloom?’
‘I don’t remember that you ever did,’ Paul answered.
‘An heirloom,’ the man with the nose exclaimed, ‘an heirloom which—in short, a highly respectable heirloom—a work of art. This is varnishing day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with me.’ He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: ‘There will be nothing done here for an hour.’
Paul followed him down the stairs and into the street, where the fog seemed thicker than before.