Why, are you not?' returned his questioner, fretted into a state of the

utmost irritation. 'Were you not a few hours since, sixty miles off, and

in the chapel to which this good woman goes to say her prayers?'

She was there too, I think?' said Quilp, still perfectly unmoved. 'I

might say, if I was inclined to be rude, how do I know but you are

dogging MY footsteps. Yes, I was at chapel. What then? I've read in

books that pilgrims were used to go to chapel before they went on

journeys, to put up petitions for their safe return. Wise men! journeys

are very perilous - especially outside the coach. Wheels come off,

horses take fright, coachmen drive too fast, coaches overturn. I always

go to chapel before I start on journeys. It's the last thing I do on such

occasions, indeed.'

That Quilp lied most heartily in this speech, it needed no very great

penetration to discover, although for anything that he suffered to

appear in his face, voice, or manner, he might have been clinging to

the truth with the quiet constancy of a martyr.

In the name of all that's calculated to drive one crazy, man,' said the

unfortunate single gentleman, 'have you not, for some reason of your

own, taken upon yourself my errand? don't you know with what object

I have come here, and if you do know, can you throw no light upon it?'

'You think I'm a conjuror, sir,' replied Quilp, shrugging up his

shoulders. 'If I was, I should tell my own fortune - and make it.'

'Ah! we have said all we need say, I see,' returned the other, throwing

himself impatiently upon a sofa. 'Pray leave us, if you please.'

Willingly,' returned Quilp. 'Most willingly. Christopher's mother, my

good soul, farewell. A pleasant journey - back, sir. Ahem!'

With these parting words, and with a grin upon his features altogether

indescribable, but which seemed to be compounded of every

monstrous grimace of which men or monkeys are capable, the dwarf

slowly retreated and closed the door behind him.

'Oho!' he said when he had regained his own room, and sat himself

down in a chair with his arms akimbo. 'Oho! Are you there, my friend?

In-deed!'

Chuckling as though in very great glee, and recompensing himself for

the restraint he had lately put upon his countenance by twisting it

into all imaginable varieties of ugliness, Mr Quilp, rocking himself to

and fro in his chair and nursing his left leg at the same time, fell into

certain meditations, of which it may be necessary to relate the

substance.

The Old Curiosity Shop