Page:Bleak House.djvu/283

 The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips, without the least consciousness. After some minutes, he makes an attempt to rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall, and stares at them.

“How do you do, Mr. Krook?” says Mr. Guppy, in some discomfiture. “How do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are pretty well?”

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at nothing, feebly swings himself round, and comes with his face against the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it; and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these things, recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur-cap on his head, and looking keenly at them.

“Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake, odd times.”

“Rather so, indeed, sir,” responds Mr. Guppy.

“What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?” says the suspicious Krook.

“Only a little,” Mr. Guppy explains.

The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up, examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

“I say!” he cries, like the Hobgoblin in the story. “Somebody's been making free here!”

“I assure you we found it so,” says Mr. Guppy. “Would you allow me to get it filled for you?”

“Yes, certainly I would!” cries Krook, in high glee. “Certainly I would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door—Sol's Arms—the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know me!”

He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy, that that gentleman, with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust, and hurries out and hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in his arms like a beloved grandchild, and pats it tenderly.

“But, I say!” he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting it, “this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is eighteenpenny!”

“I thought you might like that better,” says Mr. Guppy.

“You're a nobleman, sir,” returns Krook, with another taste—and his hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. “You're a baron of the land.”

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle, and states the object of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time to survey his proposed lodger, and seems to approve of him. “You'd like to see the room, young man?” he says. “Ah! It's a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's worth twice the rent; letting alone my company when you want it, and such a cat to keep the mice away.”

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be, and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded—for the Lord