e rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail,
whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified
as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into
another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he. So,
the golden and black griffins that supported the candelabra, with black
balls in their mouths at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their
old age they had lost all heart for playing at ball, and were dolefully
exhibiting their chains in the Missionary line of inquiry, whether they
had not earned emancipation by this time, and were not griffins and
brothers.

Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it discovered
Cripple Corner. The light and warmth pierced in at the open windows, and
irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the chimney-piece, the only
other decoration of the walls.

"My mother at five-and-twenty," said Mr. Wilding to himself, as his eyes
enthusiastically followed the light to the portrait's face, "I hang up
here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the bloom of her
youth and beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my own
chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. O! It's you, Jarvis!"

These latter words he addressed to a clerk who had tapped at the door,
and now looked in.

"Yes, sir. I merely wished to mention that it's gone ten, sir, and that
there are several females in the Counting-house."

"Dear me!" said the wine-merchant, deepening in the pink of his
complexion and whitening in the white, "are there several? So many as
several? I had better begin before there are more. I'll see them one by
one, Jarvis, in the order of their arrival."

Hastily entrenching himself in his easy-chair at the table behind a great
inkstand, having first placed a chair on the other side of the table
opposite his own seat, Mr. Wilding entered on his task with considerable
trepidation.

He ran the gauntlet that must be run on any such occasion. There were
the usual species of profoundly unsympathetic women, and the usual
species of much too sympathetic women. There were buccaneering widows
who came to seize him, and who griped umbrellas under their arms, as if
each umbrella were he, and each griper had got him. There were towering
maiden ladies who had seen better days, and who came armed with clerical
testimonials to their theology, as if he were Saint Peter with his keys.
There were gentle maiden ladies