Samuel Warren - Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1

"Here's a mark of a beastly porter-pot that's been set upon it, by all that's holy! It's been at the public-house! Too bad of Mrs. Coggs to send it me up in this state!" said he, handling it as though its touch were contamination.—(He was to pay only a halfpenny for the perusal of it.) "Faugh! how it stinks!"

"What a horrid beast she must be!" exclaimed Titmouse, after, in like manner as his friend, expelling his mouthful of smoke. "But, since better can't be had, let's hear what news is in it. Demmee! it's the only paper published, in my opinion, that's worth reading!—Any fights astirring?"

"Haven't come to them yet; give a man time , Titty!" replied Huckaback, fixing his feet on another chair, and drawing the candle closer to the paper. "It says, by the way, that the Duke of Dunderhead is certainly making up to Mrs. Thumps, the rich cheesemonger's widow;—a precious good hit that, isn't it? You know the Duke's as poor as a rat!"

"Oh! that's no news. It's been in the papers for I don't know how long. Egad, 't will quite set him up—and no mistake. Seen the Duke ever?"

"Ye—es! Oh, several times!" replied Huckaback. This was a lie, and Huckaback knew that it was.

"Deuced good-looking, I suppose?"

"Why—middling; I should say middling. Know some that needn't fear to compare with him —eh! Tit?"—and Huckaback winked archly at his friend, meaning him, however, to consider the words as applicable to the speaker.

"Ah, ha, ha!—a pretty joke! But come, that's a good chap!—You can't be reading both of those two sheets at once—give us the other sheet, and set the candle right betwixt us!—Come, fair's the word among gents , you know!"

Huckaback thus appealed to, did as his friend requested; and the two gentlemen read and smoked for some minutes in silence.

"Well—I shall spell over the advertisements now," said Titmouse, very emphatically; "there's a pretty lot of them—and I've read everything else—(though precious little there is, here besides!)—So, here goes!—One may hear of a prime situation, you know—and I'm quite sick of Tag-rag!"

Another interval of silence ensued. Huckaback was deep in the ghastly but instructive details of a trial for murder; and Titmouse, after having glanced listlessly over the entertaining first sheet of advertisements, was on the point of laying down his half of the paper, when he suddenly started in his chair, turned very pale, and stammered—

"Hollo!—hollo, Hucky!—Why"–

"What's the matter, Tit?—eh?" inquired Huckaback, greatly astonished.

For a moment Titmouse made no answer, but, dropping his cigar, fixed his eyes intently on the paper, which began to rustle in his trembling hands. What occasioned this outbreak, with its subsequent agitation, was the following advertisement, which appeared in the most conspicuous part of the "Sunday Flash:"—

"Next of Kin—Important.—The next of kin, if any such there be, of Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse, formerly of Whitehaven, cordwainer, and who died somewhere about the year 1793, in London, may hear of something of the greatest possible importance to himself, or herself, or themselves, by immediately communicating with Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, Solicitors, Saffron Hill. No time is to be lost. 9th July 18—.— The third advertisement. "

"By George! Here is a go!" exclaimed Huckaback, almost as much flustered as Titmouse over whose shoulder he had hastily read the above paragraph.

"We aren't dreaming, Hucky—are we?" inquired Titmouse, faintly, his eyes still glued to the newspaper.

"No—by George! Never was either of us fellows so precious wide awake in our lives before! that I'll answer for!" Titmouse sat still, and turned paler even than before.

"Read it up, Huck!—Let's hear how it sounds , and then we shall believe it!" said he, handing the paper to his friend.

Huckaback read it aloud.

"It sounds like something, don't it?" inquired Titmouse, tremulously, his color a little returning.

"Uncommon!—If this isn't something , then there's nothing in anything any more!" replied Huckaback, solemnly, at the same time emphatically slapping the table.

"No!—'Pon my soul! but do you really think so?" said Titmouse, seeking still further confirmation than he had yet derived from his senses of sight and hearing.

"I do, by jingo!" repeated Huckaback—"What a go it is!—Well, my poor old mother used to say, 'depend on it, wonders never will cease;' and curse me if she ever said a truer word!"

Titmouse again read over the advertisement; and then picking up and relighting his fragment of cigar, puffed earnestly in silence for some moments.

"Such things never happens to such a poor devil of a chap as me!" exclaimed Huckaback, with a sigh.

"What is in the wind, I wonder?" muttered Titmouse. "Who knows—hem!—who knows?—But now, really "– he paused, and once more read over the pregnant paragraph.—"It can't—no, curse me, it can't be"– he added, looking very serious.

"What, Tit? What can't be?" interrupted Huckaback, eagerly.

"Why, I've been thinking—but what do you think, eh?—it can't hardly be a cursed hoax of the chaps in the premises at Tag-rag's?"

"Bo!—Is there any of 'em flush enough of money to do the thing? And how should they think it would ever come to be seen by you?—Then, besides, there isn't a chap among them that could come up to the composing a piece of composition like that—no, not for all a whole year's salary—there isn't, by George! You and I couldn't do it, and, of course, they couldn't!"

"Ah! I don't know," said Titmouse, doubtfully. "But—honor!—do you really now think there's anything in it?"

"I do—I'm blowed if I don't, Tit!" was the sententious answer.

"Tol de rol, de rol, de rol, de rol—diddl'em—daddl'em—bang!" almost shouted Titmouse, jumping up, snapping his fingers, and dancing about in a wild ecstasy, which lasted for nearly a minute.

"Give me your hand, Hucky," said he presently, almost breathless. "If I am a made man—tol de rol, lol de rol, lol de rol, lol!—you see, Huck!—if I don't give you the handsomest breastpin you ever saw? No paste! real diamond!—Hurrah! I will, by jingo!"

Huckaback grasped and squeezed his hand. "We've always been friends, Tit—haven't we?" said he, affectionately.

"My room won't hold me to-night!" continued Titmouse; "I'm sure it won't. I feel as if I was, as you may say, swelling all over. I'll walk the streets all night: I couldn't sleep a wink for the life of me! I'll walk about till the shop opens. Oh, faugh! how nasty! Confound the shop, and Tag-rag, and everything and everybody in it! Thirty-five pounds a year? See if I won't spend as much in cigars the first month!"

"Cigars! Is that your go? Now, I should take lessons in boxing, to begin with. It's a deuced high thing, you may depend upon it, and you can't be fit company for swells without it, Tit! You can't, by Jove!"

"Whatever you like, whatever you like, Hucky!" cried Titmouse—adding, in a sort of ecstasy, "I'm sorry to say it, but how precious lucky that my father and mother's dead, and that I'm an only child—too-ra-laddy, too-ra-laddy!" Here he took such a sudden leap, that I am sorry to say he split his trousers very awkwardly, and that sobered him for a moment, while they made arrangements for cobbling it up as well as might be, with a needle and thread which Huckaback always had by him.

"We're rather jumping in the dark a-bit, aren't we, Tit?" inquired Huckaback, while his companion was repairing the breach. "Let's look what it all means—here it is." He read it all aloud again—"' greatest possible importance !'—what can it mean? Why the deuce couldn't they speak out plainly?"