Once a week Mrs. Dibble permitted Thomas to spend an evening out with Paul. She said she was not one for letting a young man run about London in an evening without a guide, and she thought her Thomas’s experience of the place might be of some benefit to Paul, and she would not hear of any opposition to an arrangement by which she proposed to set apart “closing time,” on Friday nights until half-past ten, for Thomas Dibble to show Paul Somerton some of the sights of London.
Mrs. Dibble also at the same time arranged to entertain her own particular friends at home on these evenings, and so balanced off her generosity to poor Dibble, her husband. Thomas Dibble soon became a bore to Paul Somerton.
So soon as the young man began to know his way about town, so soon did he become tired of Dibble, and ashamed of him, too; for Paul was not altogether a stranger to the manners and feelings of a gentleman, and was a good-looking fellow withal; whilst poor Dibble was nothing more than a respectable porter at any time.
Besides, Dibble was perpetually praising Mrs. Dibble, and would stop to buy hot potatoes in the street, and “penn’orths” of pudding; so Paul decided to shake him off, but his determination was changed by a letter from his sister.
“What should Amy want to know all about Mr. Richard for?” said Paul, reading a letter in bed, one Sunday morning, some weeks after his residence in London.
“And who is Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs; and what the deuce business is it of hers if young Hammerton is often with them?” he continued, staring up from the letter to the ceiling.
“Please, sir, it’s nine o’clock. Mrs. Dibble said I were to tell you,” said a voice through the keyhole.
“All right,” said Paul; “and hang Mrs. Dibble.”
“Were I to say so, please?” asked the voice.
“No, confound you,” said Paul; “but tell Dibble I shall go for a walk with him after chapel.”