“There’s a grand ship-launch at Leith to-day.”
“D——n your ship-launch!” said the Honeycomb; and pushing me aside, Dan strutted away under the indignation of the shame of my presence.
I could not help looking after him, and recollecting the remark of Lord Chesterfield on the South-Sea Islander who sat at table in the company of lords. Looking at his back, you could perceive no difference between him and a high-bred aristocrat. But the aristocrats don’t mind those thin distinctions.
Having some much more important business in hand that day, all recollection of Dan and his whiskers passed out of my mind. I remember I had to meet a French lackey who could point out to me a London brewer’s clerk committed to my care. The offender had run away from his employer, taking with him not only the flesh which had got so lusty upon the stout, but also a couple of thousand pounds which he ought to have deposited in a bank; nor was this even the entire amount of his depredations, for he had also contrived to abstract the brewer’s wife, described by my Frenchman as a “great succulent maman of forty years,” and not far from that number of stones avoirdupois. With such game in prospect, it was not likely I should trouble myself with Dan Gillies, nor did I care more for the Leith launch. The constables there could look to that, though I was not the less aware that if Dan got among the crowd there would be pockets rendered lighter, without more of a “purchase” than might be applied by a thief’s fingers.
Notwithstanding of the brightness of my prospects in the morning—for I had even pictured to myself the English clerk with the “succulent maman” hanging on his arm, and together promenading Princes Street—my hopes died away as the day advanced. I had got, moreover, weary of the clatter of the lackey, and was, in short, knocked up. It might be about four o’clock, I think, when I resolved upon returning by the way of the Office, where I had some report to make before going home to dinner. I proceeded slowly along Waverley Bridge, turned past the corner of Princes Street gardens, and advanced by the back of the Bank of Scotland. I was in reality at the time looking for none of my friends. I had had enough of looking, and felt inclined rather to give my eyes a rest by directing them to the ground, after the manner of melancholy musers. As I was thus listlessly making my way, I was roused by a rapid step, and I had scarcely time to look up when I encountered my young Honeycomb of the morning. I was at first confused, and no great wonder, for there was Dan Gillies without a single hair upon his face. The moment he saw me he wanted to bolt, but the apparition prompted me on the instant to cross him, and hold him for a moment at bay.
“Dan, Dan,” said I, with really as much unfeigned surprise as humour, “what has become of your whiskers, man?”
A fiery eye, and the terrible answer which sends a man to that place where one might suppose that eye had been lighted, so full of fury was it.
“Why, it’s only a fair question,” said I, again keeping my temper. “I might even wish to know the man who could do so clean a thing.”
“What have you to do with my barber?”
“Why, now you are getting reasonable,” said I; “your question is easily answered; I might want him, say on a Sunday morning, to do to me what he has done to you.”