“Tooled the Tilbury with the tandem over from Norwood,” Morty responded, “on purpose to have a good look at you. Lord Adolphus Noddlewood, my friend and chum at the Reverend’s, came along too. Lots of fun on the way! Tre-menjous row with tollgate-keeper’s wife at Camberwell Gate—Tollman, gone to bed, after bein’ up all night, stuck his head out of upper-window in a red nightcap to tell us, if we ain’t too drunk to remember it!—we’re talkin’, for once in our lives, to a decent woman.... (And you ought to ha’ heard the names she’d called us!) ... ‘Dolph, my boy,’ says I to Lord Adolphus when we got into the Borough Road—and plenty of excitement there, with a leader that kep’ tryin’ to get into the omnibuses after the old ladies!... ‘Dolph, my buck,’ says I, ‘I’m goin’ to show you where the Guinea Tree grows.’ ‘Ha, ha, ha! That means,’ says he to me, ‘you’re goin’ to fly a kite among the Jews.’ ‘You’re dead out there, Dolph!’ says I. ‘For one thing, the Gov’ bleeds free. A touch of the lancet, and he brims the basin. For another—there isn’t a Hebrew among the Ten Tribes, from Dan to Beersheba, ’ud dare to lend me a penny-piece on my tidiest signature for fear of what my father’d do when he found out they’d been gettin’ hold of his precious boy! For, deep as they are, my father’s deeper,’ says I, ‘and artful as they are, he’s more artful still; and grinding and grasping extortioners as it’s their nature to be, there’s not a Jew among ’em that the Governor wouldn’t give ninety points out of a hundred to, and beat at Black Pool—with the nigger in the pocket and a general shell-out all round! Ha, ha, haw! Whew!...” Morty whipped out a handkerchief of brilliant hue, diffusing odors of Araby, and applied it to his nose: “Piff! this here jolly old rat-hole of yours stinks over and above a bit. Why don’t you burn it down?—you’re inspired to the hilt, or I don’t know you, dad! And take a smart, snug, comfortable office in Cheapside or Cornhill?”
“It wouldn’t do! I began in this place, and have grown up here, as one might say, and have got too used to it to fancy another. And—be a little careful, Morty, my boy!” urged the father of this shining specimen, admiring the son’s high spirit and volubility, yet suffering at his well-earned praise. He felt so keen a pride in this tall, bullet-headed, broad-shouldered, loosely-jointed son, that the tears stood in his round eyes as they goggled at him; and the upright gray hair upon his pear-shaped head bristled more stiffly. “Somebody outside there might be listening,” he pleaded, “and that kind of joke’s dangerous if repeated. Be careful, my dear boy!”
“If you mean careful of those tallow-faced, inky, chilblain-fingered chaps in the office outside this, and the room on the other side of the passage,” said Morty, jerking up his coat-tails, and seating himself upon the large, important blotting-pad that lay upon the stained leather of the kneehole writing-table, that, with the iron safe previously mentioned; an armchair with loops of horsehair stuffing coming through the torn leather covering of its arms, and bulging through the torn leather covering of its back; a wooden stool adorned with a fantastic pattern of perforations; a dusty set of wooden pigeon-holes stuffed with dustier papers, and a bookcase containing Shipping-Lists, References, Handy Volumes, Compendiums, Ready Reckoners, and Guides, such as are commonly used by business men who chase the goose that lays the golden egg of Profit through the tortuous ways of Finance;—with a few more, likely to be of use to an Auxiliary-Transport Agent and Forage Contractor—comprised, with a blistered little yellow iron washstand, furtively lurking in a shady corner, the furniture of the office,—“if you mean those clerks of yours, you’re joking when you talk of them repeating anything they hear. They know you too well, Gov! They’ve sold themselves to you, body and soul. For you’re the Devil, Governor—the very Devil! Ain’t you? Gaw! Don’t tell me you ain’t! I don’t believe you!” said Morty, with a tinge of the paternal manner. “I won’t believe you! I wouldn’t believe you if you took a pair of wings (detachable patent), like what the Pasbas—there’s a stunnin’ creature!—sports in the new Opera Bally as the ‘Sylph of the Silver Sham’—no, dammy!—that ain’t it! ‘Sylph of the Silver Strand’—out of your safe, and a harp and a crown out of the corner-cupboard by the fireplace”—a rusty, narrow fireplace, with a bent poker thrust in between the bars of the niggardly grate that had a smoking lump of coal in it—“and showed me,” said Morty, with a gleam of imagination, “your first-class diploma as a qualified practicing Angel! And so you know!”
He poked Thompson Jowell in the meaty ribs that were covered by his gorgeous waistcoat, and though the hidden thorn rankled more and more, and though allusions to the personage mentioned seemed to savor of irreligion, the great man’s brow relaxed, and he chuckled, as he rattled the money in the tills of his big trouser-pockets.
“And how goes the learning, Morty, with the reverend gentleman at Norwood? Does he seem to have his trade as Tutor at his fingers’ ends? Does he push you on and prepare you? coach you and generally cram you with the things you ought to be master of? As a young fellow of means and expectations—who will shortly (or great people break promises!)—hold a Commission in Her Majesty’s Foot Guards?”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Morty. “Don’t he, though?”
“This friend of yours you’ve brought with you is a swell, it seems?” resumed his father.
“Lord Adolphus Noddlewood ... I believe you, Gov!” returned the son, screwing up his round, young, foolish face into an expression of portentous knowingness. “Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn—ain’t that the tip-top thing?”
“Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn! We’ll look him up in the Peerage presently, or your mother shall—that’s the sort of thing a woman enjoys doing,” said Thompson Jowell, rather viciously, “and that keeps her from grizzling and groaning, and thinking herself an invalid.”
“How is my mother, sir?” asked the son, with a shade of resentment at the other’s slighting tone.