| 449 | 450 | 451 | 452 | 453 |
| 1 | 133 | 265 | 398 | 530 |
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'Oh!' said Brass, 'here's the very sum. That saves trouble. You're very
welcome I'm sure. - Mr Richard, sir - ' Dick, who had by this time
reached the door, turned round.
'You needn't,' said Brass, 'trouble yourself to come back any more,
Sir.'
'
'
Eh?'
You see, Mr Richard,' said Brass, thrusting his hands in his pockets,
and rocking himself to and fro on his stool, 'the fact is, that a man of
your abilities is lost, Sir, quite lost, in our dry and mouldy line. It's
terrible drudgery - shocking. I should say, now, that the stage, or the -
or the army, Mr Richard - or something very superior in the licensed
victualling way - was the kind of thing that would call out the genius
of such a man as you. I hope you'll look in to see us now and then.
Sally, Sir, will be delighted I'm sure. She's extremely sorry to lose you,
Mr Richard, but a sense of her duty to society reconciles her. An
amazing creature that, sir! You'll find the money quite correct, I think.
There's a cracked window sir, but I've not made any deduction on that
account. Whenever we part with friends, Mr Richard, let us part
liberally. A delightful sentiment, sir!'
To all these rambling observations, Mr Swiveller answered not one
word, but, returning for the aquatic jacket, rolled it into a tight round
ball: looking steadily at Brass meanwhile as if he had some intention
of bowling him down with it. He only took it under his arm, however,
and marched out of the office in profound silence. When he had closed
the door, he re-opened it, stared in again for a few moments with the
same portentous gravity, and nodding his head once, in a slow and
ghost-like manner, vanished.
He paid the coachman, and turned his back on Bevis Marks, big with
great designs for the comforting of Kit's mother and the aid of Kit
himself.
But the lives of gentlemen devoted to such pleasures as Richard
Swiveller, are extremely precarious. The spiritual excitement of the
last fortnight, working upon a system affected in no slight degree by
the spirituous excitement of some years, proved a little too much for
him. That very night, Mr Richard was seized with an alarming illness,
and in twenty-four hours was stricken with a raging fever.
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