e. 'I'm not going to
sleep in the fresh air; no, nor I'm not going into the country either. A
pretty thing at this time of day, certainly. Pho!'

'Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater,' said brother Charles, looking at
him without the faintest spark of anger, and with a countenance radiant
with attachment to the old clerk. 'Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater,
what do you mean, sir?'

'It's forty-four year,' said Tim, making a calculation in the air with
his pen, and drawing an imaginary line before he cast it up, 'forty-four
year, next May, since I first kept the books of Cheeryble, Brothers.
I've opened the safe every morning all that time (Sundays excepted) as
the clock struck nine, and gone over the house every night at half-past
ten (except on Foreign Post nights, and then twenty minutes before
twelve) to see the doors fastened, and the fires out. I've never slept
out of the back-attic one single night. There's the same mignonette box
in the middle of the window, and the same four flower-pots, two on each
side, that I brought with me when I first came. There an't--I've said it
again and again, and I'll maintain it--there an't such a square as this
in the world. I KNOW there an't,' said Tim, with sudden energy, and
looking sternly about him. 'Not one. For business or pleasure, in
summer-time or winter--I don't care which--there's nothing like it.
There's not such a spring in England as the pump under the archway.
There's not such a view in England as the view out of my window; I've
seen it every morning before I shaved, and I ought to know something
about it. I have slept in that room,' added Tim, sinking his voice a
little, 'for four-and-forty year; and if it wasn't inconvenient, and
didn't interfere with business, I should request leave to die there.'

'Damn you, Tim Linkinwater, how dare you talk about dying?' roared the
twins by one impulse, and blowing their old noses violently.

'That's what I've got to say, Mr Edwin and Mr Charles,' said Tim,
squaring his shoulders again. 'This isn't the first time you've talked
about superannuating me; but, if you please, we'll make it the last, and
drop the subject for evermore.'

With these words, Tim Linkinwater stalked out, and shut himself up
in his glass case, with the air of a man who had had his say, and was
thoroughly resolved not to be put down.

The brothers interchanged looks, and coughed some half-dozen times
without speaking.

'He must be done somethin