It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr Jehu Tomkins.  For himself, there was no solidity in his moral composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon.  He was a small weak man of no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner, would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable parish that contained him.  Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of errand-boys.  Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law, as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign, without a murmur, their places to their betters.  As for the deaconess, I have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in reference to her.  This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,—­and carry hearts about with them as easily as they carry bags.

My first application was unsuccessful.  The deacon was not at home.  “Mr Tomkins and his lady had gone to hear the Reverend Doctor Whitefroth,”—­a northern and eccentric light, now blazing for a time in the metropolis.  It is a curious fact, and worthy to be recorded, that Mr Tomkins, and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist whom I had hitherto encountered, never professed to visit the house of prayer with any other object than that of hearing.  It was never by any accident to worship or to pray.  What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath after sabbath—­what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement, eloquence and perspiration!  Which one individual, taken at random from the concourse, was not ready to declare that his business there that day was “to hear the dear good man,” and nothing else?  If you could lay bare—­as, thank Heaven, you cannot—­your fellow-creature’s heart, whither would you behold stealing away the adoration that, in such a place, in such a time, is due to one alone—­whither, if not to Mr Clayton?  But let this pass.

I paid a second visit to my friend, and gained admittance.  It was about half-past eight o’clock in the evening, and the shop had been closed some twenty minutes before.  I was ushered into a well-furnished room behind the shop, where sat the firm—­Mrs Jehu and the junior partner.  The latter looked into his lady’s face, perceived a smile upon it, and then—­but not till then, he offered me his hand, and welcomed me with much apparent warmth.  This ceremony over, Mr Tomkins grew fidgety and uneasy, and betrayed a great anxiety to get up a conversation which he had not heart enough to set a going.  Mrs Tomkins, a woman of the world, evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling, and in peace.  I perceived immediately that I must state at once the object of my visit, and I proceeded to the task.