`Unaccountable?' his friend repeated. `I became afraid of the man. Though it was broad day, and bright sunshine, I was positively afraid of him.
I declare I half suspected him to be a supernatural visitor, and not a mortal, until he took out a common-place description of pocket-book, and handed me this card.'
`Mr. Fips,' said Tom, reading it aloud. `Austin Friars. Austin Friars sounds ghostly, John.'
`Fips don't, I think,' was John's reply. `But there he lives, Tom, and there he expects us to call this morning. And now you know as much of this strange incident as I do, upon my honour.'
Tom's face, between his exultation in the hundred pounds a year, and his wonder at this narration, was only to be equalled by the face of his sister, on which there sat the very best expression of blooming surprise that any painter could have wished to see. What the beef-steak pudding would have come to, if it had not been by this time finished, astrology itself could hardly determine.
`Tom,' said Ruth, after a little hesitation, `perhaps Mr. Westlock, in his friendship for you, knows more of this than he choose to tell.'
`No, indeed!' cried John, eagerly. `It is not so, I assure you. I wish it were. I cannot take credit to myself, Miss Pinch, for any such thing.
All that I know, or, so far as I can judge, am likely to know, I have told you.'
`Couldn't you know more, if you thought proper?' said Ruth, scraping the pie-board industriously.
`No,' retorted John. `Indeed, no. It is very ungenerous in you to be so suspicious of me when I repose implicit faith in you. I have unbounded confidence in the pudding, Miss Pinch.'
She laughed at this, but they soon got back into a serious vein, and discussed the subject with profound gravity. Whatever else was obscure in the business, it appeared to be quite plain that Tom was offered a salary of one hundred pounds a year; and this being the main point, the surrounding obscurity rather set it off than otherwise.
Tom, being in a great flutter, wished to start for Austin Friars instantly, but they waited nearly an hour, by John's advice, before they departed.
Tom made himself as spruce as he could before leaving home, and when John Westlock, through the half-opened parlour door, had glimpses of that brave little sister brushing the collar of his coat in the passage, taking up loose stitches in his gloves and hovering lightly about and about him, touching him up here and there in the height of her quaint, little, old-fashioned tidiness, he called to mind the fancy-portraits of her on the wall of the Pecksniffian work-room, and decided with uncommon indignation that they were gross libels, and not half pretty enough: though, as hath been mentioned in its place, the artists always made those sketches beautiful, and he had drawn at least a score of them with his own hands.
`Tom,' he said, as they were walking along, `I begin to think you must be somebody's son.'
`I suppose I am,' Tom answered in his quiet way.
`But I mean somebody's of consequence.'
`Bless your heart,' replied Tom, `my poor father was of no consequence, nor my mother either.'
`You remember them perfectly, then?'
`Remember them? oh dear yes. My poor mother was the last. She died when Ruth was a mere baby, and then we both became a charge upon the savings of that good old grandmother I used to tell you of. You remember! oh! There's nothing romantic in our history, John.'
`Very well,' said John in quiet despair. `Then there is no way of accounting for my visitor of this morning. So we'll not try, Tom.'
They did try, notwithstanding, and never left off trying until they got to Austin Friars, where, in a very dark passage on the first floor, oddly situated at the back of a house, across some leads, they found a little blear-eyed glass door up in one corner, with M R.
F IPS painted on it in characters which were meant to be transparent. There was also a wicked old sideboard hiding in the gloom hard by, meditating designs upon the ribs of visitors; and an old mat, worn into lattice work, which, being useless as a mat (even if anybody could have seen it, which was impossible), had for many years directed its industry into another channel, and regularly tripped up every one of Mr. Fips's clients.
Mr. Fips, hearing a violent concussion between a human hat and his office door, was apprised, by the usual means of communication, that somebody had come to call upon him, and giving that somebody admission, observed that it was `rather dark.'
`Dark indeed,' John whispered in Tom Pinch's ear. `Not a bad place to dispose of a countryman in, I should think, Tom.'
Tom had been already turning over in his mind the possibility of their having been tempted into that region to furnish forth a pie; but the sight of Mr. Fips, who was small and spare, and looked peaceable, and wore black shorts and powder, dispelled his doubts.
`Walk in,' said Mr. Fips.
They walked in. And a mighty yellow-jaundiced little office Mr. Fips had of it: with a great, black, sprawling splash upon the floor in one corner, as if some old clerk had cut his throat there, years ago, and had let out ink instead of blood.
`I have brought my friend Mr. Pinch, sir,' said John Westlock.
`Be pleased to sit,' said Mr. Fips.
They occupied the two chairs, and Mr. Fips took the office stool from the stuffing whereof he drew forth a piece of horse-hair of immense length, which he put into his mouth with a great appearance of appetite.
He looked at Tom Pinch curiously, but with an entire freedom from any such expression as could be reasonably construed into an unusual display of interest. After a short silence, during which Mr. Fips was so perfectly unembarrassed as to render it manifest that he could have broken it sooner without hesitation, if he had felt inclined to do so, he asked if Mr. Westlock had made his offer fully known to Mr. Pinch.
John answered in the affirmative.
`And you think it worth your while, sir, do you?' Mr. Fips inquired of Tom.
`I think it a piece of great good fortune, sir,' said Tom. `I am exceedingly obliged to you for the offer.'