Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my
intimate associates, I answered, "Yes."
"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang,"--I hardly felt complimented by
the word,--"and whatever he gives you, he'll give you good. Don't look
forward to variety, but you'll have excellence. And there'sa nother rum
thing in his house," proceeded Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if
the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door
or window be fastened at night."
"Is he never robbed?"
"That's it!" returned Wemmick. "He says, and gives it out publicly, "I
want to see the man who'll rob me." Lord bless you, I have heard him, a
hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in our
front office, "You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn there;
why don't you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can't I tempt you?"
Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on, for love or
money."
"They dread him so much?" said I.
"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. Not but what
he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. Britannia
metal, every spoon."
"So they wouldn't have much," I observed, "even if they--"
"Ah! But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and they
know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of 'em. He'd
have all he could get. And it's impossible to say what he couldn't get,
if he gave his mind to it."
I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when Wemmick
remarked:-"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you know.
A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look at his
watch-chain. That's real enough."
"It's very massive," said I.
"Massive?" repeated Wemmick. "I think so. And his watch is a gold
repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny. Mr. Pip,
there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all about
that watch; there's not a man, a woman, or a child, among them, who
wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain, and drop it as if it
was red hot, if inveigled into touching it."
At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more
general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the road,
until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the district of
Walworth.