“Dear me,” said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising with great politeness, “I beg your pardon, young lady—I imagined it was some importunate person who—I beg you will excuse me. Be seated, pray.”
“Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?” said Rose, glancing from the other gentleman to the one who had spoken.
“That is my name,” said the old gentleman. “This is my friend, Mr. Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?”
“I believe,” interposed Miss Maylie, “that at this period of our interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I wish to speak to you.”
Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and dropped into it again.
“I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,” said Rose, naturally embarrassed; “but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest in hearing of him again.”
“Indeed!” said Mr. Brownlow.
“Oliver Twist you knew him as,” replied Rose.
The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his features every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long deep whistle which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air, but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.
Mr. Brownlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair nearer to Miss Maylie’s, and said,
“Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven’s name put me in possession of it.”
“A bad one! I’ll eat my head if he is not a bad one,” growled Mr. Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle of his face.
“He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,” said Rose, colouring; “and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do honour to many who have numbered his days six times over.”
“I’m only sixty-one,” said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face. “And, as the devil’s in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least, I don’t see the application of that remark.”
“Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow; “he does not mean what he says.”
“Yes, he does,” growled Mr. Grimwig.
“No, he does not,” said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as he spoke.
“He’ll eat his head, if he doesn’t,” growled Mr. Grimwig.
“He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,” said Mr. Brownlow.
“And he’d uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,” responded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.
Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.
“Now, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow, “to return to the subject in which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know what intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to promise that I exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob me, has been considerably shaken.”