Page:Bleak House.djvu/74

 the letters I had so long received from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and dispatch : Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. A little way within the shop door, lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls, and discolored and dog′s-eared law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers′ offices. The litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been counsellors′ bands and gowns torn up. One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.

As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by the wall of Lincoln′s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was short, cadaverous, and withered ; with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders, and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth, as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows, were so frosted with white hairs, and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin, that he looked, from his breast upward, like some old root in a fall of snow.

“Hi hi !” said the old man coming to the door. “Have you anything to sell ?”

We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been trying to open the house door with a key she had taken from her pocket, and to whom Richard now said, that, as we had had the pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would walk up, and see her apartment for an instant ; and was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired ; that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious ; — at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers, and said, “Aye, aye ! Please her ! It won't take a minute ! Come in, come in ! Come in through the shop, if t′other door′s out of order!” we all went in, stimulated by Richard′s laughing encouragement, and relying on his protection.

“My landlord, Krook,” said the little old lady, condescending to him from her lofty station, as she presented him to us. “He is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh, I assure you he is very odd !”

She shook her head a great many times, and tapped her forehead with her finger, to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse him, “For he is a little—you know !—M—!” " said the old lady, with great stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.