His humour
is so extremely playful! Judas! Oh yes--dear me, how very good! Ha
ha ha!' All this time, Sampson was rubbing his hands, and staring, with
ludicrous surprise and dismay, at a great, goggle-eyed, blunt-nosed
figure-head of some old ship, which was reared up against the wall in a
corner near the stove, looking like a goblin or hideous idol whom the
dwarf worshipped. A mass of timber on its head, carved into the dim
and distant semblance of a cocked hat, together with a representation
of a star on the left breast and epaulettes on the shoulders, denoted
that it was intended for the effigy of some famous admiral; but,
without those helps, any observer might have supposed it the authentic
portrait of a distinguished merman, or great sea-monster. Being
originally much too large for the apartment which it was now employed
to decorate, it had been sawn short off at the waist. Even in this
state it reached from floor to ceiling; and thrusting itself forward,
with that excessively wide-awake aspect, and air of somewhat obtrusive
politeness, by which figure-heads are usually characterised, seemed to
reduce everything else to mere pigmy proportions.

'Do you know it?' said the dwarf, watching Sampson's eyes. 'Do you see
the likeness?'

'Eh?' said Brass, holding his head on one side, and throwing it a
little back, as connoisseurs do. 'Now I look at it again, I fancy I
see a--yes, there certainly is something in the smile that reminds me
of--and yet upon my word I--'

Now, the fact was, that Sampson, having never seen anything in the
smallest degree resembling this substantial phantom, was much
perplexed; being uncertain whether Mr Quilp considered it like himself,
and had therefore bought it for a family portrait; or whether he was
pleased to consider it as the likeness of some enemy. He was not very
long in doubt; for, while he was surveying it with that knowing look
which people assume when they are contemplating for the first time
portraits which they ought to recognise but don't, the dwarf threw down
the newspaper from which he had been chanting the words already quoted,
and seizing a rusty iron bar, which he used in lieu of poker, dealt the
figure such a stroke on the nose that it rocked again.

'Is it like Kit--is it his picture, his image, his very self?' cried
the dwarf, aiming a shower of blows at the insensible countenance, and
covering it with deep dimples. 'Is it the exact model and counterpart