Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/518

430 430 POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

" You can go to the Fleet, my dear Sir, if you're determined to go somewhere/' said Perker.

"That'll do," said Mr. Pickwick. "I'll go there directly I've finished my breakfast."

^ " Stop, stop, my dear Sir ; not the least occasion for being in such a violent hurry to get into a place that most other men are as eager to get out of," said the good-natured little attorney. " We must have a habeas corpus. There'll be no judge at chambers till four o'clock this afternoon. You must wait till then.".

" Very good," said Mr. Pickwick, with unmoved patience. " Then we will have a chop here, at two. See about it Sam, and tell them to be punctual."

Mr. Pickwick remaining firm, despite all the remonstrances and arguments of Perker, the chops appeared and disappeared in dujS course ; he was then put into another hackney coach, and carried off to Chancery Lane ; after waiting half an hour or so for Mr. Namby, who had a select dinner party, and could on no account be disturbed before.

There were two judges in attendance at Sergeant's Inn— one King's Bench, and one Common Pleas, and a great deal of business appeared to be transacting before them, if the number of lawyer's clerks who were hurrying in and out with bundles of papers, afforded any test. When they reached the low archway which forms the entrance to the Inn, Perker was detained a few moments parleying with the coachman about the fare and the change ; and Mr. Pickwick, stepping to one side to be out of the way of the stream of people that were pouring in and out, looked about him with some curiosity.

The people that attracted his attention most, were three or four men of shabby-genteel appearance, who touched their hats to many of the attorneys who passed, and seemed to have some business there, the nature of which Mr. Pickwick could not divine. They were curious looking fellows. One was a slim and rather lame man in rusty black, and a white neckerchief; another was a stout, burly person, dressed in the same apparel, with a great reddish-black cloth round his neck ; a third was a little weazen drunken-looking body with a pimply face. They were loitering about, with their hands behind them, and now and then, with an anxious countenance, whispered something in the ear of some of the gentlemen with papers as they hurried by. Mr. Pickwick remembered to have very often observed them lounging under the archway when he had been walking past, and his curiosity was quite excited to know to what branch of the profession these dingy -looking loungers could possibly belong.

He was just about to propound the question to Namby, who kept close beside him sucking a large gold ring on his little finger, when Perker bustled up, and observing that there was no time to lose, led the way into the Inn. As Mr. Pickwick followed, the lame man stepped up to him, and civilly touching his hat, held out a written card, which Mr. Pickwick not wishing to hurt the man's feelings br refusing, courteously accepted and deposited in his waistcoat pocket.

I