CHAPTER XI.
WHEREIN A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN BECOMES ARTICULAR IN HIS ATTENTIONS TO A CERTAIN LADY; AND MORE COMING EVENTS THAN ONE, CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE.
The family were within two or three days of their departure from Mrs. Todgers's, and the commercial gentlemen were to a man despondent and not to be comforted, because of the approaching separation, when Bailey junior, at the jocund time of noon, presented himself before Miss Charity Pecksniff, then sitting with her sister in the banquet chamber, hemming six new pocket-handkerchiefs for Mr. Jinkins; and having expressed a hope, preliminary and pious, that he might be blest, gave her, in his pleasant way, to understand that a visitor attended to pay his respects to her, and was at that moment waiting in the drawing-room. Perhaps this last announcement showed in a more striking point of view than many lengthened speeches could have done, the trustfulness and faith of Bailey's nature; since he had, in fact, last seen the visitor upon the door-mat, where, after signifying to him that he would do well to go up-stairs, he had left him to the guidance of his own sagacity. Hence it was at least an even chance that the visitor was then wandering on the roof of the house, or vainly seeking to extricate himself from a maze of bedrooms; Todgers's being precisely that kind of establishment in which an unpiloted stranger is pretty sure to find himself in some place where he least expects and least desires to be.
"A gentleman for me!" cried Charity, pausing in her work; "my gracious, Bailey!"
"Ah!" said Bailey. "It is my gracious, a'nt it? Wouldn't I be gracious neither, not if I wos him!"
The remark was rendered somewhat obscure in itself, by reason (as the reader may have observed) of a redundancy of negatives; but accompanied by action expressive of a faithful couple walking arm-in-arm towards a parochial church, mutually exchanging looks of love, it clearly signified this youth's conviction that the caller's purpose was of an amorous tendency. Miss Charity affected to reprove so great a liberty; but she could not help smiling. He was a strange boy to be sure. There was always some ground of probability and likelihood mingled with his absurd behaviour. That was the best of it!
"But I don't know any gentleman, Bailey," said Miss Pecksniff. "I think you must have made a mistake."
Mr. Bailey smiled at the extreme wildness of such a supposition; and regarded the young ladies with unimpaired affability.
"My dear Merry," said Charity, "who can it be? Isn't it odd? I have a great mind not to go to him really. So very strange you know!"
The younger sister plainly considered that this appeal had its origin in the pride of being called upon and asked for; and that it was intended as an assertion of superiority, and a retaliation upon her for
