Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket.  Like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow—­but, very unlike man indeed, he is here again the next day.  This evening he will be casually looking into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is propitiated with a hundred guineas.  Drawers, desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines.  A few hours afterwards, he and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers.

It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go home.  Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs. Bucket—­a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but which has paused at the level of a clever amateur—­he holds himself aloof from that dear solace.  Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for companionship and conversation.

A great crowd assembles in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the day of the funeral.  Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person; strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable carriages is immense.  The peerage contributes more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood.  Such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald’s College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a blow.  The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of woe.  All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified this day.

Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through the lattice blinds.  He has a keen eye for a crowd—­as for what not?—­and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage, now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the people’s heads, nothing escapes him.

“And there you are, my partner, eh?” says Mr. Bucket to himself, apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of the deceased’s house.  “And so you are.  And so you are!  And very well indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!”

The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of its assemblage to be brought out.  Mr. Bucket, in the foremost emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice a hair’s breadth open while he looks.