Free A House to Let by Charles Dickens Page A

puts me on the
mantel-piece when I won't have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me
in the sideboard when I won't give up my property."
    "Get rid of 'em, Mr. Chops."
    "I can't. We're in Society together, and what would Society say?"
    "Come out of Society!" says I.
    "I can't. You don't know what you're talking about. When you have once
gone into Society, you mustn't come out of it."
    "Then if you'll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops," were my remark, shaking
my head grave, "I think it's a pity you ever went in."
    Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his, to a surprisin extent, and slapped
it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more Wice than I thought
were in him. Then, he says, "You're a good fellow, but you don't
understand. Good-night, go along. Magsman, the little man will now walk
three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain." The last
I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on the extremest werge of
insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by one, with his hands and
knees. They'd have been much too steep for him, if he had been sober;
but he wouldn't be helped.
    It warn't long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr. Chops's
being presented at court. It was printed, "It will be recollected"—and
I've noticed in my life, that it is sure to be printed that it
will
be
recollected, whenever it won't—"that Mr. Chops is the individual of
small stature, whose brilliant success in the last State Lottery
attracted so much attention." Well, I says to myself, Such is Life! He
has been and done it in earnest at last. He has astonished George the
Fourth!
    (On account of which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a bag of
money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in
Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a bag-wig, sword, and buckles
correct.)
    I took the House as is the subject of present inquiries—though not the
honour of bein acquainted—and I run Magsman's Amusements in it thirteen
months—sometimes one thing, sometimes another, sometimes nothin
particular, but always all the canvasses outside. One night, when we had
played the last company out, which was a shy company, through its raining
Heavens hard, I was takin a pipe in the one pair back along with the
young man with the toes, which I had taken on for a month (though he
never drawed—except on paper), and I heard a kickin at the street door.
"Halloa!" I says to the young man, "what's up!" He rubs his eyebrows
with his toes, and he says, "I can't imagine, Mr. Magsman"—which he
never could imagine nothin, and was monotonous company.
    The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a candle,
and I went down and opened the door. I looked out into the street; but
nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I turned round
quick, because some creetur run between my legs into the passage. There
was Mr. Chops!
    "Magsman," he says, "take me, on the old terms, and you've got me; if
it's done, say done!"
    I was all of a maze, but I said, "Done, sir."
    "Done to your done, and double done!" says he. "Have you got a bit of
supper in the house?"
    Bearin in mind them sparklin warieties of foreign drains as we'd guzzled
away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold sassages and gin-
and-water; but he took 'em both and took 'em free; havin a chair for his
table, and sittin down at it on a stool, like hold times. I, all of a
maze all the while.
    It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to the
best of my calculations two pound and a quarter), that the wisdom as was
in that little man began to come out of him like prespiration.
    "Magsman," he says, "look upon me! You see afore you, One as has both
gone into Society and come out."
    "O! You
are
out of it, Mr. Chops? How did you get out, sir?"
    "SOLD OUT!" says he. You never saw the like of the wisdom as his Ed
expressed, when he made use of them two words.
    "My friend Magsman, I'll impart to you a discovery I've made.