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343 this feat, he saw that a dim light, previously visible at an upper window, had been already removed and was travelling down-stairs. To obtain a foreknowledge of the bearer of this taper, Mr. Bailey skipped back to the door again, and put his eye to the keyhole.

It was the merry one herself. But sadly, strangely altered! So careworn and dejected, so faultering and full of fear; so fallen, humbled, broken; that to have seen her, quiet in her coffin, would have been a less surprise.

She set the light upon a bracket in the hall, and laid her hand upon her heart; upon her eyes; upon her burning head. Then she came on towards the door, with such a wild and hurried step, that Mr. Bailey lost his self-possession, and still had his eye where the keyhole had been, when she opened it.

"Aha!" said Mr. Bailey, with an effort. "There you are, are you? What's the matter? Ain't you well, though?"

In the midst of her astonishment as she recognised him in his altered dress, so much of her old smile came back to her face that Bailey was glad. But next moment he was sorry again, for he saw tears standing in her poor dim eyes.

"Don't be frightened," said Bailey. "There ain't nothing the matter. I 've brought home Mr. Chuzzlewit. He ain't ill. He's only a little swipey you know." Mr. Bailey reeled in his boots, to express intoxication.

"Have you come from Mrs. Todgers's?" asked Merry, trembling.

"Todgers's, bless you! No!" cried Mr. Bailey. "I haven't got nothing to do with Todgers's. I cut that connexion long ago. He's been a dining with my governor at the west-end. Didn't you know he was a comin' to see us?"

"No," she said, faintly.

"Oh yes! We 're heavy swells too, and so I tell you. Don't you come out, a catching cold in your head, I'll wake him!" And Mr. Bailey expressing in his demeanour a perfect confidence that he could carry him in with ease, if necessary, opened the coach-door, let down the steps, and giving Jonas a shake, cried "We 've got home, my flower! Tumble up then!"

He was so far recovered as to be able to respond to this appeal, and to come stumbling out of the coach in a heap, to the great hazard of Mr. Bailey's person. When he got upon the pavement, Mr. Bailey first butted at him in front, and then dexterously propped him up behind; and having steadied him by these means, he assisted him into the house.

"You go up first with the light," said Bailey to Mrs. Jonas, "and we'll foller. Don't tremble so. He won't hurt you. When I've had a drop too much, I'm full of good natur myself

She went on before; and her husband and Bailey, by dint of tumbling over each other, and knocking themselves about, got at last into the sitting-room above stairs, where Jonas staggered into a seat.

"There!" said Mr. Bailey. "He's all right now. You ain't got nothing to cry for, bless you! He's righter than a trivet!"

The ill-favoured brute, with dress awry, and sodden face, and rumpled hair, sat blinking and drooping, and rolling his idiotic eyes about, until, becoming conscious by degrees, he recognised his wife, and shook his fist at her.