Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the Recording Angel?

Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as, biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed up by the shadow of the southern gateway.  Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees.  He passes close by them, seeing nothing but the ground.

“William,” says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, “there’s combustion going on there!  It’s not a case of spontaneous, but it’s smouldering combustion it is.”

“Ah!” says Mr. Guppy.  “He wouldn’t keep out of Jarndyce, and I suppose he’s over head and ears in debt.  I never knew much of him.  He was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place.  A good riddance to me, whether as clerk or client!  Well, Tony, that as I was mentioning is what they’re up to.”

Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet, as resuming a conversation of interest.

“They are still up to it, sir,” says Mr. Guppy, “still taking stock, still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of rubbish.  At this rate they’ll be at it these seven years.”

“And Small is helping?”

“Small left us at a week’s notice.  Told Kenge his grandfather’s business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better himself by undertaking it.  There had been a coolness between myself and Small on account of his being so close.  But he said you and I began it, and as he had me there—­for we did—­I put our acquaintance on the old footing.  That’s how I come to know what they’re up to.”

“You haven’t looked in at all?”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, “to be unreserved with you, I don’t greatly relish the house, except in your company, and therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little appointment for our fetching away your things.  There goes the hour by the clock!  Tony”—­Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly eloquent—­“it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once more that circumstances over which I have no control have made a melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend.  That image is shattered, and that idol is laid low.  My only wish now in connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the court with your aid as a friend is to let ’em alone and bury ’em in oblivion.  Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the—­spontaneous element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?”