Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a
pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for
my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other
similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle
and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a heavy order of
architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance,
was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of
exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody
else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house
and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the
servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of saving
trouble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the servants
felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their eating and
drinking, and to keep a deal of company down stairs. They allowed a very
liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that
by far the best part of the house to have boarded in would have been
the kitchen,--always supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for,
before I had been there a week, a neighboring lady with whom the family
were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers
slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into
tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing
that the neighbors couldn't mind their own business.
By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been
educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished himself;
but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very
early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the calling
of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,--of whom it was
remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to
help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had
left the Grindstone,--he had wearied of that poor work and had come to
London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read"
with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had
refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his
acquirements to the account of literary compilation and correction,
and on such means, added to some very moderate private resources, still
maintained the house I saw.