he planted his elbows square and firmly on the
desk, and squeezing up his cheeks with his hands, looked at her fixedly.

'Where do you come from?' he said after a long pause, stroking his chin.

'I don't know.'

'What's your name?'

'Nothing.'

'Nonsense!' retorted Quilp. 'What does your mistress call you when she
wants you?'

'A little devil,' said the child.

She added in the same breath, as if fearful of any further questioning,
'But please will you leave a card or message?'

These unusual answers might naturally have provoked some more
inquiries. Quilp, however, without uttering another word, withdrew his
eyes from the small servant, stroked his chin more thoughtfully than
before, and then, bending over the note as if to direct it with
scrupulous and hair-breadth nicety, looked at her, covertly but very
narrowly, from under his bushy eyebrows. The result of this secret
survey was, that he shaded his face with his hands, and laughed slyly
and noiselessly, until every vein in it was swollen almost to bursting.
Pulling his hat over his brow to conceal his mirth and its effects, he
tossed the letter to the child, and hastily withdrew.

Once in the street, moved by some secret impulse, he laughed, and held
his sides, and laughed again, and tried to peer through the dusty area
railings as if to catch another glimpse of the child, until he was
quite tired out. At last, he travelled back to the Wilderness, which
was within rifle-shot of his bachelor retreat, and ordered tea in the
wooden summer-house that afternoon for three persons; an invitation to
Miss Sally Brass and her brother to partake of that entertainment at
that place, having been the object both of his journey and his note.

It was not precisely the kind of weather in which people usually take
tea in summer-houses, far less in summer-houses in an advanced state of
decay, and overlooking the slimy banks of a great river at low water.
Nevertheless, it was in this choice retreat that Mr Quilp ordered a
cold collation to be prepared, and it was beneath its cracked and leaky
roof that he, in due course of time, received Mr Sampson and his sister
Sally.

'You're fond of the beauties of nature,' said Quilp with a grin. 'Is
this charming, Brass? Is it unusual, unsophisticated, primitive?'

'It's delightful indeed, sir,' replied the lawyer.

'Cool?' said Quilp.

'N-not particularly so, I think, sir,' rejoined Brass, with his teeth
chattering in hi