“Now, I am a remarkably wooden man, and stiff in the joints, and indisposed to be much in motion; therefore, as a precautionary measure, I always had his fire made up in the morning very big indeed; but

Not I, I am sure. Why, you are like a Jack-in-the-box (I had one given me once, when I was a little lad, and it was the terror of my childhood), springing out like mad, when one never means or expects

Grewgious, feeling strangely drawn towards, and at the same time strangely repelled by this individual with the blue spectacles, “just as if,” he says to himself, “I were a hard old bit of iron, which

An old young man, or a young old man? — Mr. Grewgious’ short-sighted eyes cannot make out which. A man of about middle height; thin and scared looking; with black beard and whiskers; and hair dark as night.

CHAPTER IIMR. GREWGIOUS’S NEW CLERKMR. GREWGIOUS, in his solitary chambers in Staple Inn, sipping a cup of coffee after a late dinner, and sipping it in no very enviable frame of mind, has had a trying