CHAPTER V
 
 

           A Morning Adventure
 
 

        Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed

        heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt

        that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was

        sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that

        early hour and sufficiently curious about London to think it a good

        idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should

        go out for a walk.
 
 

        "Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a

        chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.

        As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office.  He never has

        what you would call a regular breakfast.  Priscilla leaves him out

        the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight.  Sometimes

        there isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it.  But I'm

        afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would

        rather go to bed."
 
 

        "I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to

        go out."
 
 

        "If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my

        things on."
 
 

        Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir.  I made a proposal

        to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him,

        that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my

        bed again.  To this he submitted with the best grace possible,

        staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been,

        and never could again be, so astonished in his life--looking very

        miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going

        snugly to sleep as soon as it was over.  At first I was in two

        minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody

        in the house was likely to notice it.
 
 

        What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting

        myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow.  We found

        Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-

        room, which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour

        candlestick, throwing the candle in to make it burn better.

        Everything was just as we had left it last night and was evidently

        intended to remain so.  Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been

        taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast.  Crumbs, dust,

        and waste-paper were all over the house.  Some pewter pots and a

        milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met

        the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her

        mouth.  She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see

        what o'clock it was.
 
 

        But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and

        down Thavies Inn to warm his feet.  He was agreeably surprised to

        see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk.

        So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first.  I may

        mention that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and

        that I really should not have thought she liked me much unless she

        had told me so.
 
 

        "Where would you wish to go?" she asked.
 
 

        "Anywhere, my dear," I replied.
 
 

        "Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
 
 

        "Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.
 
 

        She then walked me on very fast.
 
 

        "I don't care!" she said.  "Now, you are my witness, Miss

        Summerson, I say I don't care-but if he was to come to our house

        with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he

        was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him.

        Such ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!"
 
 

        "My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the

        vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it.  "Your duty as a child--"
 
 

        "Oh!  Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's

        duty as a parent?  All made over to the public and Africa, I

        suppose!  Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's

        much more their affair than mine.  You are shocked, I dare say!

        Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's

        an end of it!"
 
 

        She walked me on faster yet.
 
 

        "But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come,

        and I won't have anything to say to him.  I can't bear him.  If

        there's any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the

        stuff he and Ma talk.  I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our

        house can have the patience to stay there and be a witness of such

        inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense,

        and Ma's management!"
 
 

        I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young

        gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday.  I was saved the

        disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada

        coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to

        run a race.  Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and

        walked moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions

        and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to

        and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy

        preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping

        out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly

        groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
 
 

        "So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.

        "We are never to get out of Chancery!  We have come by another way

        to our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Great Seal, here's

        the old lady again!"
 
 

        Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and

        smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "The

        wards in Jarndyce!  Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"
 
 

        "You are out early, ma'am," said I as she curtsied to me.
 
 

        "Ye-es!  I usually walk here early.  Before the court sits.  It's

        retired.  I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,"

        said the old lady mincingly.  "The business of the day requires a

        great deal of thought.  Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to

        follow."
 
 

        "Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my

        arm tighter through her own.
 
 

        The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick.  She answered

        for herself directly.
 
 

        "A suitor, my child.  At your service.  I have the honour to attend

        court regularly.  With my documents.  Have I the pleasure of

        addressing another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the

        old lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a

        very low curtsy.
 
 

        Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,

        good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with

        the suit.
 
 

        "Ha!" said the old lady.  "She does not expect a judgment?  She

        will still grow old.  But not so old.  Oh, dear, no!  This is the

        garden of Lincoln's Inn.  I call it my garden.  It is quite a bower

        in the summer-time.  Where the birds sing melodiously.  I pass the

        greater part of the long vacation here.  In contemplation.  You

        find the long vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"
 
 

        We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
 
 

        "When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more

        flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's

        court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth

        seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails.  Pray come and

        see my lodging.  It will be a good omen for me.  Youth, and hope,

        and beauty are very seldom there.  It is a long, long time since I

        had a visit from either."
 
 

        She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away,

        beckoned Richard and Ada to come too.  I did not know how to excuse

        myself and looked to Richard for aid.  As he was half amused and

        half curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady

        without offence, she continued to lead us away, and he and Ada

        continued to follow, our strange conductress informing us all the

        time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived close by.
 
 

        It was quite true, as it soon appeared.  She lived so close by that

        we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before

        she was at home.  Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old
 
        lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of

        some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and

        said, "This is my lodging.  Pray walk up!"
 
 

        She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND

        BOTTLE WAREHOUSE.  Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN

        MARINE STORES.  In one part of the window was a picture of a red

        paper mill at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old

        rags.  In another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT.  In another,

        KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT.  In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT.  In another,

        WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.  In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES

        BOUGHT.  Everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold

        there.  In all parts of the window were quantities of dirty

        bottles--blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-

        water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles; I am

        reminded by mentioning the latter that the shop had in several

        little particulars the air of being in a legal neighbourhood and of

        being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the

        law.  There were a great many ink bottles.  There was a little

        tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the door, labelled

        "Law Books, all at 9d."  Some of the inscriptions I have enumerated

        were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen in Kenge and

        Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received from the

        firm.  Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to

        do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable

        man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with

        neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook, within.

        There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up.  A

        little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old crackled parchment

        scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared law-papers.  I could have

        fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been

        hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors

        of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices.  The litter of rags

        tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale,

        hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been

        counsellors' bands and gowns torn up.  One had only to fancy, as

        Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that

        yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean,

        were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
 
 

        As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides

        by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a

        couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted

        lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying

        about in the shop.  Turning towards the door, he now caught sight

        of us.  He was short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk

        sideways between his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible

        smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within.  His throat,

        chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs and so gnarled

        with veins and puckered skin that he looked from his breast upward

        like some old root in a fall of snow.
 
 

        "Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door.  "Have you anything

        to sell?"
 
 

        We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been

        trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her

        pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the

        pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being

        pressed for time.  But she was not to be so easily left.  She

        became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties

        that we would walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was

        so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good

        omen she desired, that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing

        for it but to comply.  I suppose we were all more or less curious;

        at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers and

        said, "Aye, aye!  Please her!  It won't take a minute!  Come in,

        come in!  Come in through the shop if t'other door's out of order!"

        we all went in, stimulated by Richard's laughing encouragement and

        relying on his protection.
 
 

        "My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to

        him from her lofty station as she presented him to us.  "He is

        called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor.  His shop is

        called the Court of Chancery.  He is a very eccentric person.  He

        is very odd.  Oh, I assure you he is very odd!"
 
 

        She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with

        her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to

        excuse him, "For he is a little--you know--M!" said the old lady

        with great stateliness.  The old man overheard, and laughed.
 
 

        "It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern,

        "that they call me the lord chancellor and call my shop Chancery.

        And why do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop

        Chancery?"
 
 

        "I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard rather carelessly.
 
 

        "You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!

        Here's lovely hair!  I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below,

        but none so beautiful and fine as this.  What colour, and what

        texture!"
 
 

        "That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving

        of his having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand.

        "You can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty."
 
 

        The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my

        attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably

        beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the

        little old lady herself.  But as Ada interposed and laughingly said

        she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook

        shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
 
 

        "You see, I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the

        lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but

        THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that

        that's why they have given me and my place a christening.  And I

        have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock.  And I have a

        liking for rust and must and cobwebs.  And all's fish that comes to

        my net.  And I can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of

        (or so my neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter

        anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor

        repairing going on about me.  That's the way I've got the ill name

        of Chancery.  I don't mind.  I go to see my noble and learned

        brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn.  He don't

        notice me, but I notice him.  There's no great odds betwixt us.  We

        both grub on in a muddle.  Hi, Lady Jane!"
 
 

        A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his

        shoulder and startled us all.
 
 

        "Hi!  Show 'em how you scratch.  Hi!  Tear, my lady!" said her

        master.
 
 

        The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her

        tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
 
 

        "She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old

        man.  "I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers

        was offered to me.  It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I

        didn't have it stripped off!  THAT warn't like Chancery practice

        though, says you!"
 
 

        He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door

        in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry.  As he stood

        with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously

        observed to him before passing out, "That will do, Krook.  You mean

        well, but are tiresome.  My young friends are pressed for time.  I

        have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon.  My

        young friends are the wards in Jarndyce."
 
 

        "Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start.
 
 

        "Jarndyce and Jarndyce.  The great suit, Krook," returned his

        lodger.
 
 

        "Hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and

        with a wider stare than before.  "Think of it!"

        He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us

        that Richard said, "Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal

        about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other

        Chancellor!"
 
 

        "Yes," said the old man abstractedly.  "Sure!  YOUR name now will

        be--"
 
 

        "Richard Carstone."
 
 

        "Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his

        forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a

        separate finger.  "Yes.  There was the name of Barbary, and the

        name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."
 
 

        "He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!"

        said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
 
 

        "Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction.

        "Yes!  Tom Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was

        never known about court by any other name, and was as well known

        there as--she is now," nodding slightly at his lodger.  "Tom

        Jarndyce was often in here.  He got into a restless habit of

        strolling about when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the
 
        little shopkeepers and telling 'em to keep out of Chancery,

        whatever they did.  'For,' says he, 'it's being ground to bits in a

        slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to

        death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad

        by grains.'  He was as near making away with himself, just where

        the young lady stands, as near could be."
 
 

        We listened with horror.
 
 

        "He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an

        imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole

        neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a

        certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and

        walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there,

        and asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to

        fetch him a pint of wine.  'For,' says he, 'Krook, I am much

        depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment

        than I ever was.'  I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I

        persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side

        my lane (I mean Chancery Lane); and I followed and looked in at the

        window, and saw him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by

        the fire, and company with him.  I hadn't hardly got back here when

        I heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn.  I

        ran out--neighbours ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom

        Jarndyce!'"
 
 

        The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the

        lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
 
 

        "We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers.  Hi!  To be

        sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while

        the cause was on!  How my noble and learned brother, and all the

        rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as

        if they hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if

        they had--Oh, dear me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had

        heard of it by any chance!"
 
 

        Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less

        pale.  Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was

        no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a

        shock to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended

        in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections.  I

        had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to

        the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my

        surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the

        way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior

        creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord

        was "a little M, you know!"
 
 

        She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from

        which she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall.  This seemed to have

        been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her

        residence there.  She could look at it, she said, in the night,

        especially in the moonshine.  Her room was clean, but very, very

        bare.  I noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture;

        a few old prints from books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered

        against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags,

        "containing documents," as she informed us.  There were neither

        coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of clothing

        anywhere, nor any kind of food.  Upon a shelf in an open cupboard

        were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and

        empty.  There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched

        appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood

        before.
 
 

        "Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the

        greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce.  And

        very much indebted for the omen.  It is a retired situation.

        Considering.  I am limited as to situation.  In consequence of the

        necessity of attending on the Chancellor.  I have lived here many

        years.  I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here.  I

        find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much.  That

        is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery.  I am sorry I cannot

        offer chocolate.  I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place

        my establishment on a superior footing.  At present, I don't mind
 
        confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I

        sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance.  I

        have felt the cold here.  I have felt something sharper than cold.

        It matters very little.  Pray excuse the introduction of such mean

        topics."
 
 

        She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window

        and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there,

        some containing several birds.  There were larks, linnets, and

        goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.
 
 

        "I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object

        that the wards will readily comprehend.  With the intention of

        restoring them to liberty.  When my judgment should be given.  Ye-

        es!  They die in prison, though.  Their lives, poor silly things,

        are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by

        one, the whole collection has died over and over again.  I doubt,

        do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will

        live to be free!  Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"
 
 

        Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect

        a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so

        when no one but herself was present.
 
 

        "Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure

        you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or

        Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark

        and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"
 
 

        Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took

        the opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the

        chimney-piece.  We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to

        examine the birds.
 
 

        "I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for

        (you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea

        that they are singing while I am following the arguments in court.

        And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know!  Another time,

        I'll tell you their names.  Not at present.  On a day of such good

        omen, they shall sing as much as they like.  In honour of youth," a

        smile and curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile

        and curtsy.  "There!  We'll let in the full light."
 
 

        The birds began to stir and chirp.
 
 

        "I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady--the room

        was close, and would have been the better for it--"because the cat

        you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives.

        She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours.  I have

        discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is

        sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty.  In

        consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given.  She is

        sly and full of malice.  I half believe, sometimes, that she is no
 
        cat, but the wolf of the old saying.  It is so very difficult to

        keep her from the door."
 
 

        Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half-

        past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an

        end than we could easily have done for ourselves.  She hurriedly

        took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the

        table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court.  On

        our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she

        opened the door to attend us downstairs.
 
 

        "With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I

        should be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he

        might mention my case the first thing.  I have a presentiment that

        he WILL mention it the first thing this morning"
 
 

        She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the

        whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had

        bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a

        little M.  This was on the first floor.  But she had made a

        previous stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a

        dark door there.
 
 

        "The only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a law-

        writer.  The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to

        the devil.  I don't know what he can have done with the money.

        Hush!"
 
 

        She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,

        and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the

        sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.
 
 

        Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through

        it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of

        packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor.  He seemed

        to be working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead,

        and had a piece of chalk by him, with which, as he put each

        separate package or bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the

        panelling of the wall.
 
 

        Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone

        by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me,

        and chalked the letter J upon the wall--in a very curious manner,

        beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward.  It

        was a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as

        any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made.
 
 

        "Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance.
 
 

        "Surely," said I.  "It's very plain."
 
 

        "What is it?"
 
 

        "J."
 
 

        With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it

        out and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this

        time), and said, "What's that?"
 
 

        I told him.  He then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and

        asked me the same question.  He went on quickly until he had formed

        in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of

        the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on

        the wall together.
 
 

        "What does that spell?" he asked me.
 
 

        When I told him, he laughed.  In the same odd way, yet with the

        same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the

        letters forming the words Bleak House.  These, in some

        astonishment, I also read; and he laughed again.
 
 

        "Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk.  "I have a turn for

        copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor

        write."
 
 

        He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as

        if I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite

        relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, "Miss

        Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.

        Don't be tempted.  Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!"
 
 

        I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my

        friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave

        us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of

        yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada

        and me.  Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked

        back and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his

        spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and

        her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall

        feather.
 
 

        "Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard with a

        sigh.  "Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!"
 
 

        "It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned

        Ada.  "I am grieved that I should be the enemy---as I suppose I am

        --of a great number of relations and others, and that they should be

        my enemies--as I suppose they are--and that we should all be

        ruining one another without knowing how or why and be in constant

        doubt and discord all our lives.  It seems very strange, as there

        must be right somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has

        not been able to find out through all these years where it is."
 
 

        "Ah, cousin!" said Richard.  "Strange, indeed!  All this wasteful,

        wanton chess-playing IS very strange.  To see that composed court

        yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness

        of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache

        both together.  My head ached with wondering how it happened, if
 
        men were neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think

        they could possibly be either.  But at all events, Ada--I may call

        you Ada?"
 
 

        "Of course you may, cousin Richard."
 
 

        "At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on

        US.  We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good

        kinsman, and it can't divide us now!"
 
 

        "Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada gently.
 
 

        Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look.

        I smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very

        pleasantly.
 
 

        In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in
 
        the course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast

        straggled one by one into the dining-room.  I do not doubt that

        Mrs. Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but

        she presented no appearance of having changed her dress.  She was

        greatly occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a

        heavy correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would

        occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day.  The children tumbled

        about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs,

        which were perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost

        for an hour and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a

        policeman.  The equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both

        his absence and his restoration to the family circle surprised us

        all.
 
 

        She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy

        was fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found

        her.  At one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart

        for our luggage.  Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to

        her good friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart,

        kissed me in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on

        the steps; Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain

        of separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to

        Newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got up

        behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great

        concern, scattered over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out

        of its precincts.
 
 
 
 

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