Charles Dickens

“ When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes. ”

“ For a man so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of preparation.
Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning, and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn’s usual room—the room where he drank his old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.
Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little way into this room, when Jo starts and stops. ”

“ Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. ”

“ Snagsby and the proprietress of the house—a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog- hutch which is her private apartment—leads to the establishment of this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the doctor’s to get a bottle of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon.
“And who have we got here to-night?” says Mr. Bucket, opening another door and glaring in with his bull’s-eye. “Two drunken men, eh? And two women? The men are sound enough,” turning back each sleeper’s arm from his face to look at him. ”

“ Snagsby,” says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door and shaking hands with him over and over again, “what I like in you is that you’re a man it’s of no use pumping; that’s what you are. When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it’s done with and gone, and there’s an end of it. That’s what you do.”
“That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby.
“No, you don’t do yourself justice. It an’t what you endeavour to do,” says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the tenderest manner, “it’s what you do. ”

“ If I work for him ever so much, and ever so hard, there’s no one to help me; and if he should be turned bad ‘spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an’t it likely I should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as Jenny’s child died! ”

“ Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr. Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, “I must ask you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.” ”

“ Now, it an’t necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in your business once) —it an’t necessary to say to a man like you that it’s the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet. ”

“ On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in confidence, to Tom-all-Alone’s and to keep the whole thing quiet ever afterwards and never mention it to any one. ”

“ Bucket. “Not a bit!”
“Then, what,” retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, “did you say it was the lady for?”
“Cos,” says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken in his certainty, “cos that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd. It is her and it an’t her. It an’t her hand, nor yet her rings, nor yet her woice. But that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd, and they’re wore the same way wot she wore ’em, and it’s her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it.”
“Well!” says Mr. Bucket slightly, “we haven’t got much good out of you. ”