, save in the intention. I'm
glad he has lost his mistress. Ha ha! The blockhead mustn't leave the
law at present. I'm sure of him where he is, whenever I want him for
my own purposes, and, besides, he's a good unconscious spy on Brass,
and tells, in his cups, all that he sees and hears. You're useful to
me, Dick, and cost nothing but a little treating now and then. I am
not sure that it may not be worth while, before long, to take credit
with the stranger, Dick, by discovering your designs upon the child;
but for the present we'll remain the best friends in the world, with
your good leave.'

Pursuing these thoughts, and gasping as he went along, after his own
peculiar fashion, Mr Quilp once more crossed the Thames, and shut
himself up in his Bachelor's Hall, which, by reason of its
newly-erected chimney depositing the smoke inside the room and carrying
none of it off, was not quite so agreeable as more fastidious people
might have desired. Such inconveniences, however, instead of
disgusting the dwarf with his new abode, rather suited his humour; so,
after dining luxuriously from the public-house, he lighted his pipe,
and smoked against the chimney until nothing of him was visible through
the mist but a pair of red and highly inflamed eyes, with sometimes a
dim vision of his head and face, as, in a violent fit of coughing, he
slightly stirred the smoke and scattered the heavy wreaths by which
they were obscured. In the midst of this atmosphere, which must
infallibly have smothered any other man, Mr Quilp passed the evening
with great cheerfulness; solacing himself all the time with the pipe
and the case-bottle; and occasionally entertaining himself with a
melodious howl, intended for a song, but bearing not the faintest
resemblance to any scrap of any piece of music, vocal or instrumental,
ever invented by man. Thus he amused himself until nearly midnight,
when he turned into his hammock with the utmost satisfaction.

The first sound that met his ears in the morning--as he half opened his
eyes, and, finding himself so unusually near the ceiling, entertained a
drowsy idea that he must have been transformed into a fly or
blue-bottle in the course of the night,--was that of a stifled sobbing
and weeping in the room. Peeping cautiously over the side of his
hammock, he descried Mrs Quilp, to whom, after contemplating her for
some time in silence, he communicated a violent start by suddenly
yelling out--'Halloa!'