'Even for a few weeks, OF course,' replied the turnkey. And he followed

him again with his eyes, and nodded his head seven times when he was

gone. The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership, of which he

knew no more than that he had invested money in it; by legal matters

of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there,

suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of

mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face

of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in

the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible

could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour

to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp

practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was

only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility.

The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the

trembling lip on every such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners

gave him up as a hopeless job. 'Out?' said the turnkey, 'he'll never get out, unless his creditors take

him by the shoulders and shove him out.'

He had been there five or six months, when he came running to this

turnkey one forenoon to tell him, breathless and pale, that his wife was

ill. 'As anybody might a known she would be,' said the turnkey.

'We intended,' he returned, 'that she should go to a country lodging

only to-morrow. What am I to do! Oh, good heaven, what am I to do!'

'Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers,'

responded the practical turnkey, taking him by the elbow, 'but come

along with me.' The turnkey conducted him--trembling from head to foot, and constantly

crying under his breath, What was he to do! while his irresolute fingers

bedabbled the tears upon his face--up one of the common staircases in

the prison to a door on the garret story. Upon which door the turnkey

knocked with the handle of his key.

'Come in!' cried a voice inside.

The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill-smelling

little room, two hoarse, puffy, red-faced personages seated at a

rickety table, playing at all-fours, smoking pipes, and drinking brandy.

'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of you

without a minute's loss of time!'

The doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness,

red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy; the doctor in

the comparative--hoarser, puffier, more red-faced, more all-fourey,

tobaccoer, dirtier, and brandier. The doctor was amazingly shabby, in

a torn and darned rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently

short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon

carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by

mortal man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen. 'Childbed?' said

the doctor. 'I'm the boy!' With that the doctor took a comb from the

chimney-piece and stuck his hair upright--which appeared to be his

way of washing himself--produced a professional chest or case, of most

abject appearance, from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and coals

were, settled his chin in the frowsy wrapper round his neck, and became

a ghastly medical scarecrow.




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