t be longer than he can help."

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner
chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a
velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on
being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.

"Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk.

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk
shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,
and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal
place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head, and the
distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to
peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I
should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that
I should not have expected to see,--such as an old rusty pistol, a
sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and
two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy
about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black
horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I
fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at
the clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had
a habit of backing up against the wall; the wall, especially opposite to
Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too, that
the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was
the innocent cause of his being turned out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's
chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I
called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to
everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many
other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether they all claimed to have
the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what
was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came
there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's
family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such
ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the
blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.
Of course I had no experience of a London sum