l could be.
He felt himself bound to conduct himself stiffly towards Fledgeby,
and he made him a distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes smaller
in taking special note of his manner. The dolls' dressmaker sat in her
corner behind the door, with her eyes on the ground and her hands folded
on her basket, holding her crutch-stick between them, and appearing to
take no heed of anything.

'He's a long time,' muttered Mr Fledgeby, looking at his watch. 'What
time may you make it, Mr Twemlow?'

Mr Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.

'As near as a toucher,' assented Fledgeby. 'I hope, Mr Twemlow, your
business here may be of a more agreeable character than mine.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Twemlow.

Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with great
complacency at Twemlow, who was timorously tapping the table with a
folded letter.

'What I know of Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby, with a very disparaging
utterance of his name, 'leads me to believe that this is about the shop
for disagreeable business. I have always found him the bitingest and
tightest screw in London.'

Mr Twemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow. It
evidently made him nervous.

'So much so,' pursued Fledgeby, 'that if it wasn't to be true to a
friend, nobody should catch me waiting here a single minute. But if you
have friends in adversity, stand by them. That's what I say and act up
to.'

The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective of the
utterer, demanded his cordial assent. 'You are very right, sir,' he
rejoined with spirit. 'You indicate the generous and manly course.

'Glad to have your approbation,' returned Fledgeby. 'It's a coincidence,
Mr Twemlow;' here he descended from his perch, and sauntered towards
him; 'that the friends I am standing by to-day are the friends at whose
house I met you! The Lammles. She's a very taking and agreeable woman?'

Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale. 'Yes,' he said. 'She is.'

'And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what I could
do to pacify their creditor, this Mr Riah--that I certainly have gained
some little influence with in transacting business for another friend,
but nothing like so much as she supposes--and when a woman like that
spoke to me as her dearest Mr Fledgeby, and shed tears--why what could I
do, you know?'

Twemlow gasped 'Nothing but come.'

'Nothing but come. And so I came. But why,' said Fledgeby, puttin