“I'll look in again, Tiny,” said the Captain, on hearing the summons.
“DO, Captain,” said the other: “THANK YOU;” and went into the lady's studio with a heavy heart.
“Get out of the way, you infernal villain!” roared the Captain, with many oaths, to Lady Grogmore's large footman, with ruby-coloured tights, who was standing inhaling the ten thousand perfumes of the shop; and the latter, moving away in great terror, the gallant agent passed out, quite heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.
Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond Street in a fury. “I WILL know where the girl lives!” swore he. “I'll spend a five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where she lives!”
“THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!” said a little grave low voice, all of a sudden, by his side. “Pooh! what's money to you?”
Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an apple, and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock, and always two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a little brown frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he went PAPPING down the street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody met him every day, and he knew everything that everybody ever did; though nobody ever knew what HE did. He was, they say, a hundred years old, and had never dined at his own charge once in those hundred years. He looked like a figure out of a waxwork, with glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with a grin; he knew what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and what everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was the receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street to Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the “notorieties” of the town, and the private histories of each. That is, he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of truth and memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the most benevolent man in the universe, and never saw you without telling you everything most cruel of your neighbour, and when he left you he went to do the same kind turn by yourself.
“Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?” said little Tom Dale, who had just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an opera-ticket. “You make it in bushels in the City, you know you do---in thousands. I saw you go into Eglantine's. Fine business that; finest in London. Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy. I can't wash with such. Thousands a year that man has made--hasn't he?”