‘It’s all U-P,’ said Corkscrew,
almost crying. ’I’m to go down to
the bottom, and I’m to stay at the office till
seven o’clock every day for a month; and old
Foolscap says he’ll ship me the next time I’m
absent half-an-hour without leave.’
‘Oh! is that all?’ said Charley.
’If that’s all you get for pork chops
and senna, I’m all right. I shouldn’t
wonder if I did not get promoted;’ and so he
went in to his interview.
What was the nature of the advice given him, what
amount of caution he was called on to endure, need
not here be exactly specified. We all know with
how light a rod a father chastises the son he loves,
let Solomon have given what counsel he may to the
contrary. Charley, in spite of his manifold sins,
was a favourite, and he came forth from the board-room
an unscathed man. In fact, he had been promoted
as he had surmised, seeing that Corkscrew who had
been his senior was now his junior. He came forth
unscathed, and walking with an easy air into his room,
put his hat on his head and told his brother clerks
that he should be there to-morrow morning at ten,
or at any rate soon after.
‘And where are you going now, Mr. Tudor?’
said Snape.
‘To meet my grandmother at Islington, if you
please, sir,’ said Charley. ’I have
permission from Mr. Oldeschole to attend upon her
for the rest of the day—perhaps you would
like to ask him.’ And so saying he went
off to his appointment with Mr. M’Ruen at the
‘Banks of Jordan.’
A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.—AFTERNOON
The ‘Banks of Jordan’ was a public-house
in the city, which from its appearance did not seem
to do a very thriving trade; but as it was carried
on from year to year in the same dull, monotonous,
dead-alive sort of fashion, it must be surmised that
some one found an interest in keeping it open.
Charley, when he entered the door punctually at two
o’clock, saw that it was as usual nearly deserted.
One long, lanky, middle-aged man, seedy as to his
outward vestments, and melancholy in countenance,
sat at one of the tables. But he was doing very
little good for the establishment: he had no refreshment
of any kind before him, and was intent only on a dingy
pocket-book in which he was making entries with a
pencil.
You enter the ‘Banks of Jordan’ by two
folding doors in a corner of a very narrow alley behind
the Exchange. As you go in, you observe on your
left a little glass partition, something like a large
cage, inside which, in a bar, are four or five untempting-looking
bottles; and also inside the cage, on a chair, is to
be seen a quiet-looking female, who is invariably
engaged in the manufacture of some white article of
inward clothing. Anything less like the flashy-dressed
bar-maidens of the western gin palaces it would be
difficult to imagine. To this encaged sempstress
no one ever speaks unless it be to give a rare order
for a mutton chop or pint of stout. And even for
this she hardly stays her sewing for a moment, but
touches a small bell, and the ancient waiter, who
never shows himself but when called for, and who is
the only other inhabitant of the place ever visible,
receives the order from her through an open pane in
the cage as quietly as she received it from her customer.
