‘Sir,’ whispered Sam.
‘Well, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘I fully understands my instructions, do I, Sir?’ inquired Sam.
‘I hope so,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘It’s reg’larly understood about the knockin’ down, is it, Sir?’ inquired Sam.
‘Perfectly,’ replied Pickwick. ‘Thoroughly. Do what you think necessary. You have my orders.’
Sam gave a nod of intelligence, and withdrawing his head from the door, set forth on his pilgrimage with a light heart.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
HOW Mr. WINKLE, WHEN HE STEPPED OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN, WALKED GENTLY AND COMFORTABLY INTO THE FIRE
The ill-starred gentleman who had been the unfortunate cause of the unusual noise and disturbance which alarmed the inhabitants of the Royal Crescent in manner and form already described, after passing a night of great confusion and anxiety, left the roof beneath which his friends still slumbered, bound he knew not whither. The excellent and considerate feelings which prompted Mr. Winkle to take this step can never be too highly appreciated or too warmly extolled. ‘If,’ reasoned Mr. Winkle with himself — ‘if this Dowler attempts (as I have no doubt he will) to carry into execution his threat of personal violence against myself, it will be incumbent on me to call him out. He has a wife; that wife is attached to, and dependent on him. Heavens! If I should kill him in the blindness of my wrath, what would be my feelings ever afterwards!’ This painful consideration operated so powerfully on the feelings of the humane young man, as to cause his knees to knock together, and his countenance to exhibit alarming manifestations of inward emotion. Impelled by such reflections, he grasped his carpetbag, and creeping stealthily downstairs, shut the detestable street door with as little noise as posscible, and walked off. Bending his steps towards the Royal Hotel, he found a coach on the point of starting for Bristol, and, thinking Bristol as good a place for his purpose as any other he could go to, he mounted the box, and reached his place of destination in such time as the pair of horses, who went the whole stage and back again, twice a day or more, could be reasonably supposed to arrive there. He took up his quarters at the Bush, and designing to postpone any communication by letter with Mr. Pickwick until it was probable that Mr. Dowler’s wrath might have in some degree evaporated, walked forth to view the city, which struck him as being a shade more dirty than any place he had ever seen. Having inspected the docks and shipping, and viewed the cathedral, he inquired his way to Clifton, and being directed thither, took the route which was pointed out to him. But as the pavements of Bristol are not the widest or cleanest upon earth, so its streets are not altogether the straightest or least intricate; and Mr. Winkle, being greatly puzzled by their manifold windings and twistings, looked about him for a decent shop in which he could apply afresh for counsel and instruction.
His eye fell upon a newly-painted tenement which had been recently converted into something between a shop and a private house, and which a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even if the word ‘Surgery’ had not been inscribed in golden characters on a wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the gilt-labelled drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there, knocked with a halfcrown on the counter, to attract the attention of anybody who might happen to be in the back parlour, which he judged to be the innermost and peculiar sanctum of the establishment, from the repetition of the word surgery on the door — painted in white letters this time, by way of taking off the monotony.
At the first knock, a sound, as of persons fencing with fire-irons, which had until now been very audible, suddenly ceased; at the second, a studious-looking young gentleman in green spectacles, with a very large book in his hand, glided quietly into the shop, and stepping behind the counter, requested to know the visitor’s pleasure.
‘I am sorry to trouble you, Sir,’ said Mr. Winkle, ‘but will you have the goodness to direct me to — ‘
‘Ha! ha! ha!’ roared the studious young gentleman, throwing the large book up into the air, and catching it with great dexterity at the very moment when it threatened to smash to atoms all the bottles on the counter. ‘Here’s a start!’
There was, without doubt; for Mr. Winkle was so very much astonished at the extraordinary behaviour of the medical gentleman, that he involuntarily retreated towards the door, and looked very much disturbed at his strange reception.
‘What, don’t you know me?’ said the medical gentleman. Mr. Winkle murmured, in reply, that he had not that pleasure.
‘Why, then,’ said the medical gentleman, ‘there are hopes for me yet; I may attend half the old women in Bristol, if I’ve decent luck. Get out, you mouldy old villain, get out!’ With this adjuration, which was addressed to the large book, the medical gentleman kicked the volume with remarkable agility to the farther end of the shop, and, pulling off his green spectacles, grinned the identical grin of Robert Sawyer, Esquire, formerly of Guy’s Hospital in the Borough, with a private residence in Lant Street.
‘You don’t mean to say you weren’t down upon me?’ said Mr. Bob Sawyer, shaking Mr. Winkle’s hand with friendly warmth.
‘Upon my word I was not,’ replied Mr. Winkle, returning his pressure.
‘I wonder you didn’t see the name,’ said Bob Sawyer, calling his friend’s attention to the outer door, on which, in the same white paint, were traced the words ‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf.’
‘It never caught my eye,’ returned Mr. Winkle.
‘Lord, if I had known who you were, I should have rushed out, and caught you in my arms,’ said Bob Sawyer; ‘but upon my life, I thought you were the King’s-taxes.’
‘No!’ said Mr. Winkle.
‘I did, indeed,’ responded Bob Sawyer, ‘and I was just going to say that I wasn’t at home, but if you’d leave a message I’d be sure to give it to myself; for he don’t know me; no more does the Lighting and Paving. I think the Church-rates guesses who I am, and I know the Waterworks does, because I drew a tooth of his when I first came down here. But come in, come in!’ Chattering in this way, Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed Mr. Winkle into the back room, where, amusing himself by boring little circular caverns in the chimneypiece with a red-hot poker, sat no less a person than Mr. Benjamin Allen.
‘Well!’ said Mr. Winkle. ‘This is indeed a pleasure I did not expect. What a very nice place you have here!’
‘Pretty well, pretty well,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘I PASSED, soon after that precious party, and my friends came down with the needful for this business; so I put on a black suit of clothes, and a pair of spectacles, and came here to look as solemn as I could.’
‘And a very snug little business you have, no doubt?’ said Mr. Winkle knowingly.
‘Very,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘So snug, that at the end of a few years you might put all the profits in a wineglass, and cover ‘em over with a gooseberry leaf.’ ‘You cannot surely mean that?’ said Mr. Winkle. ‘The stock itself — ‘ ‘Dummies, my dear boy,’ said Bob Sawyer; ‘half the drawers have nothing in ‘em, and the other half don’t open.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Winkle.
‘Fact — honour!’ returned Bob Sawyer, stepping out into the shop, and demonstrating the veracity of the assertion by divers hard pulls at the little gilt knobs on the counterfeit drawers. ‘Hardly anything real in the shop but the leeches, and THEY are secondhand.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought it!’ exclaimed Mr.