Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/193

139 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 139

Mv&s a tall man — a very tall man — in a ])rou'n coat and bri'ght basket buttons, and black whiskers, and wavy black hair, who was seated at tea with the widow, and who it required no great penetration to dis- cover was in a fair way of persuading her to be a widow no longer, but to confer upon him the privilege of sitting down in that bar, for and during the whole remainder of the term of his natural life.

" Tom Smart was by no means of an irritable or envious disposition, but somehow or other the tall man with the brown coat and the bright basket buttons did rouse what little gall he had in hfs composition, and did make him feel extremely indignant, the more especially as he could now and then observe, from his seat before the glass, certain little affec- tionate familiaritres passing between the tall man and the widow, which sufficiently denoted that the tall man was as high in favour as he was in size. Tom was fond of hot punch — I may venture to say he was veiy fond of hot punch — and after he had seen the vixenish mare well fed and well littered down, and eaten every bit of the nice little hot dinner which the widow tossed up for him with her own hands, he just ordered a tumbler of it, by way of experiment. Now if there was one thing in the whole range of domestic art, which the widow could manu- facture better than another, it was this identical article ; and the first tumbler was adapted to Tom Smart's taste with such peculiar nicety, that he ordered a second with the least possible delay. Hot punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen — an extremely pleasant thing under any circumstances — but in that snug old parlour, before the roaring fire, with the wind blowing outside till every timber in the old house creaked again, Tom Smart found it perfectly delightful. He ordered another tumbler, and then another — 1 am not quite certain whether he didn't order another after that — but the more he drank of the hot punch the more he thought of the tall man.

business has he in that snug bar ? Such an ugly villain too I ' said Tom. ' If the widow had any taste, she might surely pick up some better fellow than that.' Here Tom's eye wandered from the glass on the chimney-piece, to the glass on the table, and as he felt himself becoming gradually sentimental, he emptied the fourth tumbler of punch and ordered a fifth.
 * ' * Confound his impudence,' said Tom Smart to himself, * what

" Tom Smart, gentlemen, had always been very much attached to the public line. It had long been his ambition to stand in a bar of his own, in a green coat, knee-cords, and tops. He had a great notion of taking the chair at convivial dinners, and he had often thought how well he could preside in a room of his own in the talking way, and what a capital example he could set to his customers in the drinking depart- ment. All these things passed rapidly through Tom's mind as he sat drinking the hot punch by the roaring fire, and he felt very justly and properly indignant that the tall man should be in a fairway of keeping buch an excellent house, while he, Tom Smart, was as far off from it as over. So, after deliberating over the two last tumblers, whether he hadn't a perfect right to pick a quarrel with the tall man for having contrived to get into the good graces of the buxom widow, Tom Smart