Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/270

208 208 POiSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

" No I don't," replied the old woman, gruffly ; " he's out o' town

now.

" That's unfortunate," said Mr. Pickwick ; « where's his clerk — do

you know ? "

" Yes I know where he is, but he wouldn't thank me for teUing you," replied the laundress.

« I have very particular business with him," said Mr. Pickwick.

« Won't it do in the morning?" said the woman.

« Not so well," replied Mr. Pickwick.

" Well," said the old woman, " if it was anything very particular, I was to say where he was, so I suppose there's no harm in telling. If you just go to the Magpie and Stump, and ask at the bar for Mr. Lowten, they'll show you in to him, and he's Mr. Perker's clerk."

With this direction, and having been furthermore informed that the hostelry in question was situated in a court, happy in the double advan- tage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely approximating to the back of New Inn, Mr. Pickwick and Sara descended the ricketty staircase in safety, and issued forth in quest of the Magpie and Stump.

This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and his companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public- house. That the landlord was a man of a money-making turn, was sufficiently testified by the fact of a small bulk-head beneath the tap- room window, in size and shape not unlike a sedan-chair, being underlet to a mender of shoes : and that he was a being of a philanthropic mind, was evident from the protection afforded to a pie-man, who vended his delicacies without fear of interruption, on the very door-step. In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cyder and Dantzic spruce, while a large black board, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public, that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty, as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be sup- posed to extend. When we add, that the weather-beaten sign-board bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the ''stump," we have said all that need be said, of the exterior of the edifice.

On Mr. Pickwick's presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female emerged from behind a screen therein, and presented herself before him. "Is Mr. Lowten here. Ma'am?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. « Yes he is, Sir," replied the landlady. " Here, Charley, show the gentleman in, to Mr. Lowten."

" The gen'lm'n can't go in, just now, " said a shambling pot-boy, with a red head, " 'cos Mr. Lowten's a singin' a comic song, and he'll put him out. He'll be done d'rectly. Sir."

The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most itnanimous hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses, announced that the song had that instant terminated ; and Mr. Pickwick, after desiring