The factotum shook his head.
"You're both a good deal too fond of this house," he said. "The people that have got it now are strangers to us. They've bought the business since our last trip. I don't like the look on them."
"No more do I, if it comes to that. I was sorry to hear the old folks had been done up. But come, Joyce, some more rum-and-water. Let's enjoy ourselves to-night, man, if I'm to start by the first coach to-morrow morning. What's that?"
The captain stopped, with the bell-rope in his hand, to listen to the sound of music close at hand. A woman's voice, fresh and clear as the song of a sky-lark, was singing "Wapping Old Stairs," to the accompaniment of a feeble old piano.
"What a voice!" cried the sailor. "Why, it seems to pierce to the very core of my heart as I listen to it. Let's go and hear the music, Joyce."
"Better not, captain," answered the warning voice of the clerk. "I tell you they're a bad lot in this house. It's a sort of concert they give of a night; an excuse for drunkenness, and riot, and low company. If you're going by the coach to-morrow, you'd better get to bed early to-night. You've been drinking quite enough as it is."
"Drinking!" cried Valentine Jernam; "why, I'm as sober as a judge.
Come, Joyce, let's go and listen to that girl's singing."
The captain left the room, and Harker followed, shrugging his shoulders as he went.
"There's nothing so hard to manage as a baby of thirty years old," he muttered; "a blessed infant that one's obliged to call master."
He followed the captain, through a dingy little passage, into a room with a sanded floor, and a little platform at one end. The room was full of sailors and disreputable-looking women; and was lighted by several jets of coarse gas, which flared in the bleak March wind.