"Messenger's brewery," he replied, "is as familiar to me as my own fireside. I've grown up beside it. I know all the people in it. They all know me. Perhaps they respect me. For it was well known that a handsome legacy was promised and expected. And nothing, after all. As for taking you over, of course I can. We will go at once. It will take time; and time is money."
"May I go too?" asked Harry.
"No, sir; you may not. It shall not be said in the Mile End Road that an industrious man like myself, a worker for clients, was seen in working-time with an idler."
The walk from Stepney Green to Messenger & Marsden's Brewery is not far. You turn to the left if your house is on one side, and to the right if it is on the other; then you pass a little way down one street, and a little way, turning again to the left, up another—a direction which will guide you quite clearly. You then find yourself before a great gateway, the portals of which are closed; beside it is a smaller door, at which, in a little lodge, sits one who guards the entrance.
Mr. Bunker nodded to the porter and entered unchallenged. He led the way across a court to a sort of outer office.
"Here," he said, "is the book for the visitors' names. We have them from all countries; great lords and ladies; foreign princes; and all the brewers from Germany and America, who come to get a wrinkle. Write your name in it, too. Something, let me tell you, to have your name in such noble company."
She took a pen and wrote hurriedly.
Mr. Bunker looked over her shoulder.
"Ho! ho!" he said, "that is a good one! See what you've written."