or them--we may be good and happy without riches, Fred.
Say not another syllable. I know my cue; smart is the word. Only one
little whisper, Fred--is the old min friendly?'

'Never you mind,' replied his friend.

'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word,
and caution is the act.' with that, he winked as if in preservation of
some deep secret, and folding his arms and leaning back in his chair,
looked up at the ceiling with profound gravity.

It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already
passed, that Mr Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of
the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if no such
suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull eyes,
and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses against him. His
attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest
arrangement, but was in a state of disorder which strongly induced the
idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted of a brown body-coat
with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind, a
bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and
a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in
the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with an outside pocket
from which there peeped forth the cleanest end of a very large and very
ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far
as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed
no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with
the semblance of a ring on its little finger and a black ball in its
grasp. With all these personal advantages (to which may be added a
strong savour of tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of
appearance) Mr Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on
the ceiling, and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key,
obliged the company with a few bars of an intensely dismal air, and
then, in the middle of a note, relapsed into his former silence.

The old man sat himself down in a chair, and with folded hands, looked
sometimes at his grandson and sometimes at his strange companion, as if
he were utterly powerless and had no resource but to leave them to do
as they pleased. The young man reclined against a table at no great
distance from his friend, in apparent indifference to everything that
had passed; and I--who felt the diffi