Pickwick Abroad: A Companion to the Pickwick Papers — page 130: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

118 four-pair back bed-room, alzas, an agreeable and airy attic,in the locality above described. On the morning upon which we are de- sirous of introducing our readers to Captain Walsingham, the breakfast things had been swept away, there not being many to sweep —the room carefully dusted out—and the table duly covered with a green-baize cloth which the landlady had borrowed from the pawnbroker’s over the way. Captain Wal- singham surveyed. all these preparations with the most unfeigned delight ; and when the little dirty servant, who ministered to his comforts and to those of the whole family (thirteen in all, besides the pigs in the back yard) had retired, Captain Wal- singham placed about a dozen sheets of fools- cap paper at equal distances round the table, and then laid a new pen, a small piece of blotting-paper, and a couple of wafers upon each of the sheets of foolscap thus disposed of. The ink-stand was stood in the middle of the table, around which chairs were speedily arranged, a large Langham gracing the top, and a Windsor the bottom: and this being accomplished, Captain Walsing- ham expressed a wish to his landlady, whom he summoned to witness the preparations, “that the Directors would make their ap- pearance.” No’ sooner were the words uttered, than aloud knock at the street-door seemed to proclaim that the wish they expressed stood some chance of being immediately attended to. The landlady rushed down stairs— Captain Horatio Clarence Walsingham as- sumed a most business-like and sedate air, and a sober attitude—and in process of time, the vice-chairman was ushered into the room. , “Mr. Cherryburton, sir, if you please,” screamed the landlady, as she flung open the three-pair back door with as much importance as if it would admit the visitor into a palace. / “ How are you, Mr. Cherryburton ?” ejacu- lated the Captain, rushing forward to wel- come “the deputy-chairman of the infant Company whereof he himself was the man- aging director. “You see that I do the thing economically: it is no use taking offices and all that, till some of the advances upon the shares are made. I expect the printer to send me up the book with the printed forms every minute.” “ Very good,” returned Mr. Cherryburton, who was a very short and a very fat gen- tleman, with no neck, but plenty of head. ad ? Py ~ PICKWICK ABROAD. “Mr. Snuffery, sir,’ cried the landlady, after a short interval of about five minutes: and the treasurer, whose place was quite a sinecure, walked into the room. “ Welcome, Snuffery, old boy,” ejaculated Captain Walsingham, forgetting, in the ex- citement of the moment, the respect due to a treasurer, even by his great employer. “Mister Snuffery, here,” suggested the treasurer : “Snufiery at the ale house, if you like ;” it having been at the ale-house that the idea of establishing a Joint-stock Com- pany first occurred to Captain Walsingham and Mr. Snuffery, as they discussed a pot of mild intermediate beer and a yard of clay some weeks previous to this meeting. “Very good, very good,” exclaimed Mr. Cherry burton: “there’s nothing like standing up for etiquette ;’ and with these words he stood himself exactly before the fire, so that neither Captain Walsingham nor Mr. Snuf- fery felt the slightest benefit from that fraction of a vast elementary whole. “Mr. Stephen Muzzlewhite and Mr. Wat- kins Welladay,” chaunted the landlady, as two more full-grown directors of an infant project sallied into the room. “Well, we shall be pretty numerous, I see,” observed Mr. Cherryburton, pretending not to notice the desperate energy with which the new-comers rubbed their hands, and persisting in the retention of his enviable position in front of the fire. “Yes, there'll be a tolerable sprinkle,” coincided Mr, Snuffery ; “and if every one will only subscribe for a certain number of shares and pay the earnest money, I may open my books at once.” “Oh! certainly—decidedly—we are all very ready to pay the earnest money,” cried Captain Walsingham, instinctively glancing with great feeling to a pile of fourpence-halfpenny in coppers, with a six- pence upon the top, which he had prudently placed upon the mantel-piece, probably with an eye to a little display. “Mr. Molesworthy,” cried the landlady ; and a very large nose, with an exceedingly small man behind it, entered the room; “and Mr. Muggins,” continued the lessee of the house, in an unusually shrilly tone of voice. “Come in, Mr. Muggins,” ejaculated Cap- tain Walsingham: “pray come in—don’t stand in the passage.” ) “« A-don’t now be foolish,” echoed the landlady’s voice in a whisper from the passage just alluded to; “Till fetch you a GOMIGDoOo (A) (CO)