heck this
uncommon exuberance on the part of Mr Sampson; but as she made no
attempt to do so, and rather appeared to exhibit a tacit acquiescence
in it, he concluded that they had just been cheating somebody, and
receiving the bill.

'Will you have the goodness, Mr Richard,' said Brass, taking a letter
from his desk, 'just to step over to Peckham Rye with that? There's no
answer, but it's rather particular and should go by hand. Charge the
office with your coach-hire back, you know; don't spare the office; get
as much out of it as you can--clerk's motto--Eh, Mr Richard? Ha ha!'

Mr Swiveller solemnly doffed the aquatic jacket, put on his coat, took
down his hat from its peg, pocketed the letter, and departed. As soon
as he was gone, up rose Miss Sally Brass, and smiling sweetly at her
brother (who nodded and smote his nose in return) withdrew also.

Sampson Brass was no sooner left alone, than he set the office-door
wide open, and establishing himself at his desk directly opposite, so
that he could not fail to see anybody who came down-stairs and passed
out at the street door, began to write with extreme cheerfulness and
assiduity; humming as he did so, in a voice that was anything but
musical, certain vocal snatches which appeared to have reference to the
union between Church and State, inasmuch as they were compounded of the
Evening Hymn and God save the King.

Thus, the attorney of Bevis Marks sat, and wrote, and hummed, for a
long time, except when he stopped to listen with a very cunning face,
and hearing nothing, went on humming louder, and writing slower than
ever. At length, in one of these pauses, he heard his lodger's door
opened and shut, and footsteps coming down the stairs. Then, Mr Brass
left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his
very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man
whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite
seraphic.

It was towards this moving spectacle that the staircase and the sweet
sounds guided Kit; on whose arrival before his door, Mr Brass stopped
his singing, but not his smiling, and nodded affably: at the same time
beckoning to him with his pen.

'Kit,' said Mr Brass, in the pleasantest way imaginable, 'how do you
do?'

Kit, being rather shy of his friend, made a suitable reply, and had his
hand upon the lock of the street door when Mr Brass called him softly
back.

'You are not to go, if you pleas