A Hopeful Club Discovered.
When Captain Bream, as before mentioned, was obliged to hurry off to London, and forsake the Miss Seawards, as well as his theological studies, he hastened to that portion of the city where merchants and brokers, and money-lenders, and men of the law do love to congregate.
Turning down Cheapside the captain sought for one of the many labyrinths of narrow streets and lanes that blush unseen in that busy part of the Great Hive.
“Only a penny, sir, only a penny.”
The speaker was an ill-conditioned man, and the object offered for sale was a climbing monkey of easily deranged mechanism.
“Do you suppose,” said the captain, who, being full of anxious thought was for the moment irascible, “do you suppose that I am a baby?”
“Oh! dear no, sir. From appearances I should say you’ve bin weaned some little time—only a penny, sir. A nice little gift for the missus, sir, if you ain’t got no child’n.”
“Can you direct me,” said the captain with a bland look—for his tempers were short-lived—“to Brockley Court?”
“First to the left, sir, second to the right, straight on an’ ask again—only a penny, sir, climbs like all alive, sir.”
Dropping a penny into the man’s hand with a hope that it might help the monkeys to climb, Captain Bream turned into the labyrinth, and soon after found himself in a dark little room which was surrounded by piles of japanned tin boxes, and littered with bundles of documents, betokening the daily haunt of a man-of-law.