and his mouth tightened into a post-office again.
At last, when we got to his place of business and
he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he
looked as unconscious of his Walworth property
as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the
arbour and the lake and the fountain and the
Aged, had all been blown into space together
by the last discharge of the Stinger.

           CHAPTER XXVI.

IT fell out, as Wemmick had told me it
would, that I had an early opportunity of
comparing my guardian's establishment with that of
his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his
room, washing his hands with his scented soap,
when I went into the office from Walworth;
and he called me to him, and gave me the
invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick
had prepared me to receive. "No ceremony,"
he stipulated, " and no dinner dress, and say
tomorrow." I asked him where we should come
to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I
believe it was in his general objection to make
anything like an admission, that he replied,
"Come here, and I'll take you home with me."
I embrace this opportunity of remarking that
he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon
or a dentist. He had a closet in his room,
fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the
scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an
unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the
door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe
them and dry them all over this towel, whenever
he came in from a police-court or dismissed a
client from his room. When I and my friends
repaired to him at six o'clock next day, he
seemed to have been engaged on a case of a
darker complexion than usual, for we found him
with his head butted into this closet, not only
washing his hands, but laving his face and
gargling his throat. And even when he had
done all that, and had gone all round the
jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the
case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as
usual when we passed out into the street who
were evidently anxious to speak with him; but
there was something so conclusive in the halo
of scented soap which encircled his presence,
that they gave it up for that day. As we walked
along westward, he was recognised ever and
again by some face in the crowd of the streets,
and whenever that happened he talked louder to
me; but he never otherwise recognised anybody,
or took notice that anybody recognised him.

He conducted us to Gerrard-street, Soho, to
a house on the south side of that street. Rather
a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in want
of painting, and with dirty windows. He took
out his key and opened the door, and we all
went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little
used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a
series of three dark brown rooms on the first
floor. There were carved garlands on the
panelled walls, and as he stood among them
giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops
I thought they looked like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms;
the second was his dressing-room; the third his
bedroom. He told us that he held the whole
house, but rarely used more of it than we saw.
The table was comfortably laid—no silver in the
service, of course—and at the side of his chair
was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of
bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of
fruit for dessert. I noticed throughout, that he
kept everything under his own hand, and
distributed everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw,
from the backs of the books, that they were
about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography,
trials, acts of parliament, and such things.
The furniture was all very solid and good, like
his watch-chain. It had an official look, however,
and there was nothing merely ornamental
to be seen. In a corner, was a little table of
papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed
to bring the office home with him in that
respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and
fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions
until now—for he and I had walked together—
he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell,
and took a searching look at them. To my
surprise, he seemed at once to be principally if
not solely interested in Drummle.

"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my
shoulder and moving me to the window, " I
don't know one from the other. Who's the
Spider?"

"The spider?" said I.

"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow."

"That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; " the
one with the delicate face is Startop."

Not making the least account of "the one
with the delicate face," he returned. "Bentley
Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look
of that fellow."

He immediately began to talk to Drummle:
not at all deterred by his replying in his heavy
reticent way, but apparently led on by it to
screw discourse out of him. I was looking at
the two, when there came between me and
them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for
the table.

She was a was a  woman of about forty, I supposed
—but I may have thought her older than she
was, as it is the manner of youth to do. Rather
tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely pale,
with large faded-blue eyes, and a quantity of
streaming hair. I cannot say whether any
diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to
be parted as if she were panting, and her face
to bear a curious expression of suddenness and
flutter; but I know that I had been to see
Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before,
and that her face looked to me as if it were all
disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen
rise out of the Witches' caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian
quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that
dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our
seats at the round table, and my guardian kept
Drummle on one side of him, while Startop sat