Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is going to have an interview with the dentist, examines the books on the waiting-room table. He remembered them afterward. It seemed to him that Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged for some time in pleading his friend's cause.
Pen's natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but have heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that Mr. Bacon himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack's room while Warrington was talking there, and Warrington knowing Bacon's weaknesses, acted upon them with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the first place, he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him from the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his inferiors, as boys pass the mark. "What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr. Bacon?" Warrington said. "You can't live much in the world, or you would know him. A man of property in the West, of one of the most ancient families in England, related to half the nobility in the empire—he's cousin to Lord Pontypool—he was one of the most distinguished men at Oxbridge; he dines at Gaunt House every week."
"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well—really—Law bless me now," said Mr. Bacon.
"I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a copy of the book—the what-d'-you-call-'em."
"Law bless me now, does he? The what-d'-you-call-'em. Indeed!"
"'The Spring Annual' is its name—as payment for these verses. You don't suppose that such a man as Mr. Arthur Pendennis gives up a dinner at Gaunt House for nothing? You know, as well as any body, that the men of fashion want to be paid."
"That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir," said the publisher.
"I tell you he's a star; he'll make a name, sir. He's a new man, sir."
"They've said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington," the publisher interposed, with a sigh. "There was Lord Viscount Dodo, now; I gave his lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only sold eighty copies. Mr. Popjoy's Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead."
"Well, then, I'll take my man over to Bungay," Warrington said, and rose from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon, who was instantly ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr. Warrington's, and finally asked his manager what those proposals were. When he heard that the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of ballads, which Mr. Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon said, "Law bless you, give him a check directly;" and with this paper Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen's hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a fortune. He offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond instantly. "What should he go and buy for Laura and his mother? He must buy something for them."