I don't know anything about it,' replied the bewildered Tottle.

'Well,' said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home, 'the next time you
make an offer, you had better speak plainly, and don't throw a chance
away. And the next time you're locked up in a spunging-house, just wait
there till I come and take you out, there's a good fellow.'

How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned to Cecil-street is
unknown. His boots were seen outside his bedroom-door next morning; but
we have the authority of his landlady for stating that he neither emerged
therefrom nor accepted sustenance for four-and-twenty hours. At the
expiration of that period, and when a council of war was being held in
the kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial beadle to break
his door open, he rang his bell, and demanded a cup of milk-and-water.
The next morning he went through the formalities of eating and drinking
as usual, but a week afterwards he was seized with a relapse, while
perusing the list of marriages in a morning paper, from which he never
perfectly recovered.

A few weeks after the last-named occurrence, the body of a gentleman
unknown, was found in the Regent's canal. In the trousers-pockets were
four shillings and threepence halfpenny; a matrimonial advertisement from
a lady, which appeared to have been cut out of a Sunday paper: a
tooth-pick, and a card-case, which it is confidently believed would have
led to the identification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the
circumstance of there being none but blank cards in it. Mr. Watkins
Tottle absented himself from his lodgings shortly before. A bill, which
has not been taken up, was presented next morning; and a bill, which has
not been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his parlour-window.

CHAPTER XI--THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING

Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his acquaintance called him, 'long Dumps,'
was a bachelor, six feet high, and fifty years old: cross, cadaverous,
odd, and ill-natured. He was never happy but when he was miserable; and
always miserable when he had the best reason to be happy. The only real
comfort of his existence was to make everybody about him wretched--then
he might be truly said to enjoy life. He was afflicted with a situation
in the Bank worth five hundred a-year, and he rented a 'first-floor
furnished,' at Pentonville, which he originally took because it commanded
a dismal prospect of an adjacent churchyard. He was fam