“I am,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and there’s an end of it.  Get out of the way.”

“Mithter Jaggerth!  Half a moment!  My hown cuthen’th gone to Mithter Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth.  Mithter Jaggerth!  Half a quarter of a moment!  If you’d have the condethenthun to be bought off from the t’other thide — at hany thuperior prithe! — money no object! — Mithter Jaggerth — Mithter — !”

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red-hot.  Without further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap.

“Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.

“Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon.  Well?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as might do.”

“What is he prepared to swear?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this time; “in a general way, anythink.”

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate.  “Now, I warned you before,” said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you.  You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell me that?”

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious what he had done.

“Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his elbow.  “Soft Head!  Need you say it face to face?”

“Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly, “once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is prepared to swear?”

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having been in his company and never left him all the night in question.”

“Now, be careful.  In what station of life is this man?”

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—­” when my guardian blustered out: 

“What?  You will, will you?”

("Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.)

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again: 

“He is dressed like a ’spectable pieman.  A sort of a pastry-cook.”

“Is he here?” asked my guardian.

“I left him,” said Mike, “a settin on some doorsteps round the corner.”