His melancholy outgoings at length were rewarded by some pecuniary incomings.  The demise of others secured a living for him, and after a few unusually propitious sickly seasons, he grimly smiled as he counted his gains:  the mourner exulted, and, in praise of his profession, the mute became eloquent.

Another event occurred:  after burying so many people professionally, he at length buried Mrs. Dumps; that, of course, was by no means a matter of business.  I have before remarked that she was descended from the Coffins; she was now gathered to her ancestors.

Dumps had long been proud of gentility of appearance, a suit of black had been his working day costume, nothing therefore could be more easy than for Dumps to turn gentleman.  He did so; took a villa at Gravesend, chose for his own sitting room a chamber that looked against a dead wall, and whilst he was lying in state upon the squabs of his sofa, he thought seriously of the education of his son, and resolved that he should be instantly taught the dead languages.

Sighmon Dumps was decidedly a young man of a serious turn of mind.  The metropolis had few attractions for him, he loved to linger near the monument; and if ever he thought of a continental excursion, the Catacombs and Pere la Chaise were his seducers.

His father died, his old employer furnished him with a funeral; the mute was silenced, and the mourner was mourned.

Sighmon Dumps became more serious than ever; he had a decided nervous malady, an abhorrence of society, and a sensitive shrinking when he felt that any body was looking at him.  He had heard of the invisible girl; he would have given worlds to have been an invisible young gentleman, and to have glided in and out of rooms, unheeded and unseen, like a draft through a keyhole.  This, however, was not to be his lot; like a man cursed with creaking shoes, stepping lightly, and tiptoeing availed not; a creak always betrayed him when he was most anxious to creep into a corner.

At his father’s death he found himself possessed of a competency and a villa; but he was unhappy, he was known in the neighbourhood, people called on him, and he was expected to call on them, and these calls and recalls bored him.  He never, in his life, could abide looking any one straight in the face; a pair of human eyes meeting his own was actually painful to him.  It was not to be endured.  He sold his villa, and determined to go to some place where, being a total stranger, he might pass unnoticed and unknown, attracting no attention, no remarks.

He went to Cheltenham and consulted Boisragon about his nerves, was recommended a course of the waters, and horse exercise.

The son of the weeper very naturally thought he had already “too much of water;” he, however, hired a nag, took a small suburban lodging, and as nobody spoke to him, nor seemed to care about him, he grew better, and felt sedately happy.  This blest seclusion, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” was not the predestined fate of Sighmon:  odd circumstances always brought him into notice.  The horse he had hired was a piebald, a sweet, quiet animal, warranted a safe support for a timid invalid.  On this piebald did Dumps jog through the green lanes in brown studies.