CHAPTER XIV.  William Bent Pitman Hears of Something to his Advantage

On the morning of Sunday, William Dent Pitman rose at his usual hour, although with something more than the usual reluctance.  The day before (it should be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the person of a lodger.  Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business, and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the lodger’s character.  Mr Pitman had been led to understand his guest was not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of an angel.  At tea he had been vastly pleased; till hard on one in the morning he had sat entranced by eloquence and progressively fortified with information in the studio; and now, as he reviewed over his toilet the harmless pleasures of the evening, the future smiled upon him with revived attractions.  ’Mr Finsbury is indeed an acquisition,’ he remarked to himself; and as he entered the little parlour, where the table was already laid for breakfast, the cordiality of his greeting would have befitted an acquaintanceship already old.

’I am delighted to see you, sir’—­these were his expressions—­’and I trust you have slept well.’

’Accustomed as I have been for so long to a life of almost perpetual change,’ replied the guest, ’the disturbance so often complained of by the more sedentary, as attending their first night in (what is called) a new bed, is a complaint from which I am entirely free.’

‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said the drawing-master warmly.  ’But I see I have interrupted you over the paper.’

‘The Sunday paper is one of the features of the age,’ said Mr Finsbury.  ’In America, I am told, it supersedes all other literature, the bone and sinew of the nation finding their requirements catered for; hundreds of columns will be occupied with interesting details of the world’s doings, such as water-spouts, elopements, conflagrations, and public entertainments; there is a corner for politics, ladies’ work, chess, religion, and even literature; and a few spicy editorials serve to direct the course of public thought.  It is difficult to estimate the part played by such enormous and miscellaneous repositories in the education of the people.  But this (though interesting in itself) partakes of the nature of a digression; and what I was about to ask you was this:  Are you yourself a student of the daily press?’

‘There is not much in the papers to interest an artist,’ returned Pitman.

‘In that case,’ resumed Joseph, ’an advertisement which has appeared the last two days in various journals, and reappears this morning, may possibly have failed to catch your eye.  The name, with a trifling variation, bears a strong resemblance to your own.  Ah, here it is.  If you please, I will read it to you: