if any
one of them by chance held his peace for a moment, he stood gasping and
panting for an opportunity to strike in again: in a word, that they had
reached that pitch of impatience and anxiety where men can neither be
persuaded nor reasoned with; and that it would have been as easy to
turn the most impetuous wind that ever blew, as to prevail on them to
reconsider their determination. So, after telling Mr Swiveller how
they had not lost sight of Kit's mother and the children; how they had
never once even lost sight of Kit himself, but had been unremitting in
their endeavours to procure a mitigation of his sentence; how they had
been perfectly distracted between the strong proofs of his guilt, and
their own fading hopes of his innocence; and how he, Richard Swiveller,
might keep his mind at rest, for everything should be happily adjusted
between that time and night;--after telling him all this, and adding a
great many kind and cordial expressions, personal to himself, which it
is unnecessary to recite, Mr Garland, the notary, and the single
gentleman, took their leaves at a very critical time, or Richard
Swiveller must assuredly have been driven into another fever, whereof
the results might have been fatal.

Mr Abel remained behind, very often looking at his watch and at the
room door, until Mr Swiveller was roused from a short nap, by the
setting-down on the landing-place outside, as from the shoulders of a
porter, of some giant load, which seemed to shake the house, and made
the little physic bottles on the mantel-shelf ring again. Directly
this sound reached his ears, Mr Abel started up, and hobbled to the
door, and opened it; and behold! there stood a strong man, with a
mighty hamper, which, being hauled into the room and presently
unpacked, disgorged such treasures as tea, and coffee, and wine, and
rusks, and oranges, and grapes, and fowls ready trussed for boiling,
and calves'-foot jelly, and arrow-root, and sago, and other delicate
restoratives, that the small servant, who had never thought it possible
that such things could be, except in shops, stood rooted to the spot in
her one shoe, with her mouth and eyes watering in unison, and her power
of speech quite gone. But, not so Mr Abel; or the strong man who
emptied the hamper, big as it was, in a twinkling; and not so the nice
old lady, who appeared so suddenly that she might have come out of the
hamper too (it was quite large enough), and who, bustling abou