'Have you nearly done, Sammy?' said Miss Brass; for in her mild and
feminine lips, Sampson became Sammy, and all things were softened down.

'No,' returned her brother. 'It would have been all done though, if
you had helped at the right time.'

'Oh yes, indeed,' cried Miss Sally; 'you want my help, don't you?--YOU,
too, that are going to keep a clerk!'

'Am I going to keep a clerk for my own pleasure, or because of my own
wish, you provoking rascal!' said Mr Brass, putting his pen in his
mouth, and grinning spitefully at his sister. 'What do you taunt me
about going to keep a clerk for?'

It may be observed in this place, lest the fact of Mr Brass calling a
lady a rascal, should occasion any wonderment or surprise, that he was
so habituated to having her near him in a man's capacity, that he had
gradually accustomed himself to talk to her as though she were really a
man. And this feeling was so perfectly reciprocal, that not only did
Mr Brass often call Miss Brass a rascal, or even put an adjective
before the rascal, but Miss Brass looked upon it as quite a matter of
course, and was as little moved as any other lady would be by being
called an angel.

'What do you taunt me, after three hours' talk last night, with going
to keep a clerk for?' repeated Mr Brass, grinning again with the pen in
his mouth, like some nobleman's or gentleman's crest. Is it my fault?'

'All I know is,' said Miss Sally, smiling drily, for she delighted in
nothing so much as irritating her brother, 'that if every one of your
clients is to force us to keep a clerk, whether we want to or not, you
had better leave off business, strike yourself off the roll, and get
taken in execution, as soon as you can.'

'Have we got any other client like him?' said Brass. 'Have we got
another client like him now--will you answer me that?'

'Do you mean in the face!' said his sister.

'Do I mean in the face!' sneered Sampson Brass, reaching over to take
up the bill-book, and fluttering its leaves rapidly. 'Look
here--Daniel Quilp, Esquire--Daniel Quilp, Esquire--Daniel Quilp,
Esquire--all through. Whether should I take a clerk that he
recommends, and says, "this is the man for you," or lose all this, eh?'

Miss Sally deigned to make no reply, but smiled again, and went on with
her work.

'But I know what it is,' resumed Brass after a short silence. 'You're
afraid you won't have as long a finger in the business as you've been
used to have. Do