elings. Anybody passing him in the street might have
known him for a good man at first sight; for his whole figure teemed
with a consciousness of the moral homily he had read to Mrs Todgers.

Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, thy censure, upright
Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter;
sleeves of lawn, a great man's smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon
the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie,
or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred;--but to worship
the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! oh pitiful, pitiful!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHEREIN A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN BECOMES PARTICULAR IN HIS ATTENTIONS TO A
CERTAIN LADY; AND MORE COMING EVENTS THAN ONE, CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE

The family were within two or three days of their departure from Mrs
Todgers's, and the commercial gentlemen were to a man despondent and
not to be comforted, because of the approaching separation, when Bailey
junior, at the jocund time of noon, presented himself before Miss
Charity Pecksniff, then sitting with her sister in the banquet chamber,
hemming six new pocket-handkerchiefs for Mr Jinkins; and having
expressed a hope, preliminary and pious, that he might be blest, gave
her in his pleasant way to understand that a visitor attended to pay
his respects to her, and was at that moment waiting in the drawing-room.
Perhaps this last announcement showed in a more striking point of view
than many lengthened speeches could have done, the trustfulness and
faith of Bailey's nature; since he had, in fact, last seen the visitor
on the door-mat, where, after signifying to him that he would do well to
go upstairs, he had left him to the guidance of his own sagacity. Hence
it was at least an even chance that the visitor was then wandering on
the roof of the house, or vainly seeking to extricate himself from the
maze of bedrooms; Todgers's being precisely that kind of establishment
in which an unpiloted stranger is pretty sure to find himself in some
place where he least expects and least desires to be.

'A gentleman for me!' cried Charity, pausing in her work; 'my gracious,
Bailey!'

'Ah!' said Bailey. 'It IS my gracious, an't it? Wouldn't I be gracious
neither, not if I wos him!'

The remark was rendered somewhat obscure in itself, by reason (as the
reader may have observed) of a redundancy of negatives; but accompanied
by action expressive of a faithful couple wa