"What! Shanks' clerk, I suppose," said Marlow.
"No, sir, no," replied the landlord; "Shanks did not draw the mortgage, either; for he was lawyer to both parties, and Mrs. Hazleton didn't like that;—O, she's cute enough!"
"I think you must be mistaken," said Marlow, in a decided tone; "for Mrs. Hazleton assured me, when there was a question between herself and me, that she was not nearly as rich as she was supposed, and that if the law should award me back rents, it would ruin her."
"Gammon, sir!" replied the landlord, who had now imbibed a sufficient quantity of wine, in addition to sundry potations during the day. "I should not have thought you a man to be so easily hooked, Mr. Marlow; but if you will ask the clerk of Doubledoo and Kay, who was down here, staying three or four days about business, you'll find that she advanced every penny, and got a mortgage for upwards of five thousand pounds;—but I think we had better have that other bottle, sir?"
"By all means," said Marlow, and Mr. Cherrydew rolled away to fetch it.
"By the way, what was that clerk's name you mentioned?"
"Sims, sir, Sims," said the landlord, drawing the cork; and then setting down the bottle on the table, he added, with a look of great contempt, "he's the leetlest little man you ever saw, sir, not so tall as my girl Dolly, and with no more stomach than a currycomb, a sort of cross breed between a monkey and a penknife. He's as full of fun as the one, too, and as sharp as the other. He will hold a prodigious quantity of punch, though, small as he is. I could not fancy where he put it all, it must have gone into his shoes."
"Come, come, Mr. Cherrydew," said Marlow, laughing, "do not speak disrespectfully of thin people—I am not very fat myself."
"Lord bless you, sir, you are quite a fine, personable man; and in time, with a few butts, you would be as fine a man as I am."
Marlow devoutly hoped not, but he begged Mr. Cherrydew to sit down again, and do his best to help him through the wine he had brought; and out of that bottle came a great many things which Marlow wanted much more than the good sherry which it contained.